January Justice

by Athol Dickson

“Sure. Make yourself at home.”

  “In that case, would you like bacon and eggs?”

  “Sounds good.”

  I sat at the little table in the corner and watched as she cooked. As always, she was well dressed in a pale-blue robe and matching pajamas and slippers. A memory came of Haley exactly in the same physical positions, in exactly the same place, doing exactly the same things. I had a fleeting whimsy that the only difference was time. I considered metaphysical coincidences, accidents of time and space, and possibilities that might include Haley still existing somehow as a collection of atoms and molecules among the other molecules and atoms in that same space she had once occupied.

  A strange sense of distance began to creep into the room. The woman in my kitchen seemed to slide away, the entire room elongating away from me. Hard edges softened and blurred, with everything becoming translucent. Glowing, changing colors flowed into the air from everything I saw, new ideas appearing, drifting randomly across my interior landscape, enticing me to follow into chaos.

  I shook my head one time, very quickly, like a dog emerging from deep water. I told myself to think of what was true. I turned away from Olivia. I looked out through the window. I saw Teru on the far side of the lawn, sending pipe smoke up into the clouds and watering a hibiscus that was in glorious full bloom. I thought about him and Simon searching for me on that lonely mountain road. With that memory of generous friendship, I felt the madness fading.

  “Here you go,” said Olivia, setting a plate on the table. She sat across from me and started eating. Her eye was bruised but hadn’t swollen shut, which surprised me. The mark on her cheek where Medallion had slapped her was still there. Chewing seemed to cause her pain. I looked away from her again, took a bite of eggs, and went through the motions, moving my jaw up and down.

  “How you feeling?” I asked.

  “A little sore here and there, but I’m okay.”

  “Any pain inside your stomach or chest?”

  “No. It’s all superficial,” she said. “Who’s the painter?”

  “What?”

  “In my bedroom. The painting on the easel. Is that yours?”

  “I dabble just a little. Used to, anyway.”

  “It’s beautiful. I think you do more than dabble.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you sell them in a gallery?”

  “I usually just give them away.”

  “I know a woman who owns a gallery in Laguna. She’d probably love to represent you.”

  “It’s just a hobby, Olivia. I wouldn’t want to turn it into something with a lot of pressure.”

  “I noticed the paint’s dry on that one, but it doesn’t look finished.”

  “I was in the middle of it when Miss Lane and I were attacked.”

  “But that was months ago.”

  I swallowed a bite of eggs and said, “I have a driving job tonight. Will you be all right here alone?”

  “I can stay another night?”

  “Stay until you’re comfortable going home. However long it takes.”

  “I laid awake a long time.” With her fork she pushed the food around on her plate. “I thought you might come to me.”

  I took another bite of eggs and said nothing.

  “Malcolm, are you gay?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Lately, I’m not even happy.”

  “Then, why?”

  I decided to turn her lie back on her. “How could I even think that way about a woman who just survived a rape attempt?”

  She stood abruptly and gathered the dishes. She carried them to the kitchen sink and began to rinse them off. I thought she might be scrubbing them a little more forcefully than necessary. She stopped all of a sudden and put both hands on the countertop on each side of the sink.

  She turned to look at me over her shoulder. “You’re too good to be true.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s smart to do things the wrong way.”

  “Don’t I get a say in it?”

  “Olivia, you’re in no condition to start a thing with me. It’s obvious you’re into something way over your head. You need help, but for some reason you won’t admit it.”

  “Is that why you called the police?” She was looking past me through the window at my back. “I thought you weren’t going to do that.”

  I turned to follow her gaze. Outside the window I saw Tom Harper. He had parked his Crown Victoria in the driveway. He stood talking to Teru with his sports coat draped over his arm and his shoulder holster in plain sight. His freshly scrubbed young partner stood a few feet away from them, watching the boats in the harbor. A rainbow had formed in the arc of water Teru aimed at a bed of freshly planted lilies. Rainbows were always following Teru around when he watered the flowers, at least it seemed that way to me, but then I couldn’t trust myself when it came to seeing colors.

  Teru laughed at something Harper said. His laughter sent a little puff of smoke up from his pipe. Harper grinned toward the guesthouse. I had the feeling he could see me through the window.

  Turning back toward Olivia, I said, “He’s with the police, but he’s not here about you. At least, I didn’t call them about it. Maybe you should get dressed.”

  Harper knocked a few minutes later. I opened the door and said, “Hi, Tom.”

  “Malcolm.”

  “Come on in.” When Harper walked inside alone, I said, “Your partner’s welcome too.”

  Harper said, “We need a private talk. Besides, Andre likes to watch the boats.”

  I closed the door behind him, went into the kitchen, poured him a cup of coffee and topped off mine. We took our cups into the living room and sat down, me on the sofa and him in a chair beside it. He saw Olivia’s shoes where she had kicked them off the night before.

  He raised one eyebrow. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “If you were, I wouldn’t have invited you in. What’s on your mind?”

  “Couple of things.” He took a sip of coffee. “Guy I know with the Newport PD has been keeping me informed on the bomb investigation. Turns out the C-4 explosive and the detonator were part of a truckload of gear stolen from Camp Pendleton a year ago. Stuff has been showing up here and there ever since.”

  “Here and there?”

  “A bank job in Cincinnati. A narcotics related car bomb assassination down in Mexico. Nothing political.”

  “You checked with NCIS on the theft?”

  “Sure. The truck was found on a dirt road outside of Temecula a day after. The perps did an excellent job of wiping it down. No prints. No DNA.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Not hardly. Yesterday a kid up in Silverado Canyon blew his hands off, playing with the stuff. Kid bled out before the paramedics arrived, so we got nothing from him, but we did find a couple more bricks of C-4 from the same batch, among other things. One of the other things was a note pad with this address on it.”

  “Who was this guy?”

  “A William Ronald Jawarski.” Harper looked at me. “Ring a bell?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “You sure? He was nineteen. Dishonorable from the Corps six months ago for conduct unbecoming. Threatened to frag a Captain.”

  “No…but maybe he had something against me, too. Something from my days in the Corps.”

  Harper shook his head. “Doubtful. You were already discharged when he joined up.”

  “How about a connection to the case I’m working?”

  “Be a lot easier to know if you’d come clean about the case.”

  “We’ve been over that. I’ve told you everything I can.”

  “All right. In that case all I can say is there doesn’t seem to be a link between this kid and the URNG, or the government of Guatemala. He was twelve years old and living in a foster home in North Carolina when Delarosa murdered Toledo, so there’s not much chance of a connection to that, either.”

  “Maybe he was working a contract for the guys who tried to kill me
in the mountains.”

  “Maybe. But there’s one more thing, and you’re not going to like it.”

  “I haven’t liked much of anything for a long time.”

  “We found a photograph in the house with him.” He pulled a snapshot from his short pocket and handed it to me. “That’s copy.”

  I saw it was a candid shot of Haley and me, standing together near the entrance to the guest house. There was an x over her face, and a circle around mine. The photo in my hand began to shake. I put it on the coffee table and looked away from Harper, working hard to stay calm. I said, “You think he’s the one who killed Miss Lane?”

  “No way to know. It’s a different MO, poisoning and bombs, but there are some psychological connections. The perp has distance from the victim. And both methods demonstrate a disregard for collateral damage, since it’s easy for bystanders to get killed along with the target.”

  I said, “You were in Jawarski’s house?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did it stink?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you smell something like rotten fish?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sal told me about that.”

  “Well?”

  “No,” said Harper. “No rotten fish. Just the usual stench you get around a body.”

  “Did you find a camera?”

  “There was a cell phone. It had a camera built in, but it was damaged in the explosion. No way to check the memory chip.”

  I said, “That shot wasn’t taken with a cell phone camera. Had to be from outside the property, shooting through the bars at the gate. You find a camera with a telephoto lens?”

  “No.”

  “So Jawarski didn’t take the photo himself.”

  “Either that,” said Harper, “or he did take it and ditched the camera.”

  “Why would he ditch the camera?”

  “No reason that I know.”

  “Makes more sense that someone gave him the photo.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see anything else to connect him with Miss Lane?”

  “Malcolm, all we have is the one photo, unless you want to fill me in with more.”

  “No,” I said.

  “No you can’t, or no you won’t?”

  Olivia entered the room. She was wearing a pair of white capris with a black-and-white horizontally striped shirt that clung tightly to accentuate her figure. Harper stood to greet her.

  “Well,” he said. “Good morning.”

  I said, “Tom Harper, meet Olivia Soto. Olivia, this is Tom. We’re old buddies.”

  She gave him her hand, which he held a moment too long. I explained that Harper and I had served in the Marines together.

  She smiled and said, “That’s nice.”

  Harper said, “That’s quite a shiner. What happened to your face?”

  “I fell and hurt myself last night,” said Olivia. “Would you excuse me for a moment?” She went into the kitchen.

  Harper didn’t look away from her until she was out of sight behind the cabinets, then he turned to me and softly said, “Hubba hubba.”

  “You’re all class, Harper. Don’t let anybody tell you different.”

  “You talk to me about class at a time like this? Who is that gorgeous girl?”

  “I told you. Olivia Soto.”

  “Name sounds familiar. What is she? Actress? Model?”

  “Doña Elena Montes’s personal assistant.”

  The look in his eyes changed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Sitting in my living room having coffee with a friend. What are you doing, Tom?”

  “This is serious. It could cause you a lot of trouble if the DA finds out you’re sleeping with the Montes woman’s assistant.

  “I’m not sleeping with her.”

  “Then what’s she doing here this time of day?”

  Olivia stepped back into the living room with a cup of coffee. Harper turned toward her. Every time she came into a room, it felt like a grand entrance. She crossed to the sofa with perfect grace, as if she were balancing a stack of books on her head. She settled down beside me and tucked her bare feet underneath a pillow. “I’m here because Malcolm was worried I might have a concussion, so he wanted to keep an eye on me.”

  Harper looked at me. I shrugged.

  “All right,” he said. “It’s your neck on the line. Just remember I was never here, and I never saw you two together.”

  We all sipped our coffee. I waited. Harper was in no hurry. He sat staring at Olivia with what appeared to be a mixture of admiration and skepticism. He took another sip of coffee. Olivia returned his stare.

  He said, “There’s something else we should talk about.”

  “What could that be?” asked Olivia.

  “Not you and me, unfortunately. Me and Malcolm.”

  “In that case, I think I’ll take a walk.”

  I said, “Stay on the property, okay?”

  She gave me a smile as she opened the front door. When she had stepped outside, Harper said, “Why does she have to stay on the property?”

  I almost told him about the attack at her house the night before, but that could lead too close to the fact that she was Alejandra Delarosa’s daughter, and I didn’t want the police to know that yet. Olivia was my only promising lead, and I hated to give her up to the police until I knew how she fit in with the home invasion charge against me.

  I said, “I’m worried about a concussion, like she told you.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “If you say so. Listen, there’s a gang investigation we have going. It’s been underway for about a year. Mexican mafia guys out of Santa Ana bringing cocaine across the border at Tijuana, using gringos for mules.”

  I said, “Hard to believe they’d be able to move serious quantities through Tijuana these days. I figured the Feds would have that crossing squared away.”

  “Normally that’s true, but we got some dirty guards involved. So we’re working with the FBI on this one. They track entry photos taken on these particular guards’ shifts. If anyone comes in who fits a certain profile, they send the images to us. We see what we can do about the people in the photos. Find the cars, check them for modifications and traces of cocaine, maybe turn the mules and set up a bust with their handlers next time they do a drop.”

  I asked, “What does this have to do with me?” I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but I was curious to see how he would put it.

  Harper finished off his coffee and stood up. “Hypothetically speaking, if a person out on bail was told not to leave the county, and that person went to Mexico for any reason, then that person would be in violation of his bail even if he came back of his own free will. He would be subject to rearrest and confinement until there was a determination of his guilt or innocence in a court of law, and his bail would be subject to forfeiture. All of that could happen, hypothetically, if photographic evidence of his trip were taken when such a person reentered the States, and if the photo was noticed by certain detectives, and if a friend in the department couldn’t keep those detectives from noticing, which that friend could not.”

  “He could not?”

  “Not possible.”

  “Okay…hypothetically speaking, how long might it take these other law-enforcement officers from noticing this evidence and rearresting this bail violator?”

  “It could happen anytime, Malcolm. Two or three days at the outside, would be my guess.”

  43

  “I’m feeling pretty nervous.”

  I glanced at Sid Gold’s reflection in the rearview mirror of the stretch Mercedes and said, “That’s surprising.”

  From the backseat, he said, “I know, right? I do all these huge deals all the time. Lionsgate. Paramount. Sony. The Weinsteins. I took a meeting with Spielberg just yesterday for crying out loud, and here I am nervous about going to a singles bar.”

  “Been a long time?”

  “Twenty-three years, since I met Fann
y. Can you believe it? My palms are sweating back here.”

  “Want me to turn around?”

  “No. Now that I’m so scared about it, I need to get this done. I’m not going to mope around all by myself while Fanny’s got that guy. It’s a matter of self-respect.”

  “You’ll be fine. Just smile and ask questions and listen. Women love it when you listen.”

  “Ain’t that the truth. I probably wouldn’t be in this situation if I’d listened more to Fanny.”

  I pulled to the curb in front of the Quiet Woman in Corona del Mar and got out under the sign of the medieval woman with her head cut off. I opened the door for Sid. I was wearing the black suit I usually wore like a uniform when I drove the stretch. In a new holster underneath the jacket, I also wore the M11 Simon had procured for me after my release from jail.

  I said, “You have my number on your cell?”

  “I’ll call you when I’m ready. Unless, hey, you want to go in and have a drink with me?”

  “If that’s what you want. But what about that self-respect?”

  “You’re right. Yeah, you’re right. I gotta do this on my own.”

  “You’ll be fine, Sid.”

  He took a step toward the door, then turned back. “I won’t talk about the business, and I won’t let them know I have money. I’m not interested in gold diggers.”

  “Makes perfect sense. Just be yourself. And remember to listen.”

  “Listen.” He nodded. “Here goes.”

  He walked to the door and pulled it open. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” spilled out onto the sidewalk. I watched Sid until the door swung closed, then I got behind the wheel, made an illegal U-turn, and drove the limo south along the Pacific Coast Highway to the Crystal Cove Promenade parking lot. I swung around to face the ocean and killed the engine.

  The sun was already down, but there was a pale pink afterglow to the west. I saw a few white lights twinkling offshore, probably commercial fishing boats or container ships steaming south to San Diego and Mexico, or up to Long Beach or LA Harbor.

  I went over everything again, item by item, all the facts and guesses I had considered the night before. My thoughts circled around the dead bomber up in Silverado Canyon, trying to figure out if he had been the one who murdered Haley. There wasn’t enough information, so I considered Olivia for a while, Olivia in her bed at my place, hoping I would come to her. I thought about that and the fact that she was one of the more desirable women I had ever met. And then I considered the strange fact that while I did find her desirable, I did not desire her. I wondered how that worked and decided it was probably too complicated to understand. Maybe it meant I would never desire any woman again. Maybe I was one of those people for whom love comes only once. Or maybe it was the fact that Olivia was lying about who she was and what she wanted. It seemed pretty obvious she intended to use me for her own purposes. I didn’t mind protecting her from Medallion and his partner, but I didn’t much like the idea of going to prison for her, if that was what she had in mind.