by Alan Russell
“You are the ones who suffer. And I’m sure you believe those who murdered your loved ones should have your fate, but worse. An eye for an eye. I’m sure many of you believe that these killers should be offered no balm or succor.
“I understand your feelings of anger and abandonment. When Christ was crucified, he cried out: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ But what did Gandhi say of revenge? ‘An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind.’
“Nelson Mandela had many reasons to hate his oppressors. And for a time he did hate his oppressors. But then he realized that harboring such hate was pointless. Constantly feeding the hate, he realized, diminished him as a person. It kept him from being. I suspect it’s the same with many of you. Hate is a full-time job. It was while he was in prison that Mandela came to a startling realization: ‘If you want to make peace with your enemy,’ he said, ‘you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.’
“That seems impossible, doesn’t it? How on earth can your enemy become your partner? Let me repeat my favorite seven words: ‘It always seems impossible until it’s done.’
“You have good reason to hate. But you have better reason to forgive. Keeping hate alive takes great effort. You have to stoke its fires by reliving your pain. By directing your thoughts backward, you can’t look to the future; you can’t even live for today.”
As Pastor Isaac spoke, I snuck glances around the room. There were wet cheeks and nodding heads. Most seemed receptive to his words, but some sat with crossed arms and rigid posture. Not all the membership was ready to give up their hate; its grip was too strong. Maybe they perceived hate as their only life preserver.
Still, when Pastor Isaac finished his talk, there was mostly warm applause. During the question-and-answer period that followed, though, some club members interrogated the pastor’s lenient attitude toward “the monsters.”
“I reject that label,” Isaac said. “By calling these men and women monsters, what we are saying is that they are not human and are not deserving of human rights.”
I thought about Ellis Haines. He had murdered Suzanne Epstein, the wife of 187 Club member Arthur Epstein. Arthur wasn’t in attendance that night. Being a single parent now, he spent as much time as possible with his son, Joel. Judging by the messages he’d asked me to pass on to Haines, Arthur could neither forgive nor forget. I wasn’t sure if I could either, but I was glad for people like Isaac Jordan. He made me think. What separated a prisoner’s shackles from the spectral chains worn by the likes of Jacob Marley?
I walked to the front of the room, thanked our speaker for all his good work and insights, and then I paid homage to the late Detective Walker by reading his favorite poem, “Dreams,” written by Langston Hughes. Many in the room knew the short poem by heart, and other voices bolstered mine as I recited the words.
My hope was the same as the poet’s: I wanted the members of my club of woe to still dare to dream, and to find their wings.
Chapter Five
A Friend of Mine
I helped break down the community room, putting away the chairs and making sure all the trash was picked up. A few of the club members stayed to chat, but before long the room was almost empty.
“Do you need anything else, Detective?” Catalina asked.
“Not a thing,” I said. “Have I mentioned that I’d be lost without you?”
At her smile I said, “Let me walk you to your car.”
She tried to wave me off, but I insisted, and stayed in the lot until her car started. Then I jogged back to the community room, where Marta and Luciana were waiting.
“Do you want to talk here,” I asked them, “or would you prefer sitting down in a coffee shop?”
The two had a silent consultation of eyes and Marta answered for them: “Here is fine.”
I turned to Luciana; her big eyes were tearing up again. “Take a few deep breaths,” I said. “I promise I don’t bite and I’ll do my best to make this as painless as possible.”
She nodded, but after taking the suggested breaths, she turned away from me, finding it easier to direct her eyes and words at Marta.
After hearing her out, Marta said, “Luciana say that something happen this week that tell her Mateo is dead. She no tell the other detective because she no trust him. She tell her priest, though, and he say to her she should talk to the police. But she want to know if what she say to you can be . . . ”
Marta paused to speak to Luciana, and after getting clarification said, “She want it private.”
“So she wants it off the record? She wants it unofficial?”
Marta nodded, and the women talked some more before I heard a translation. “She also want to know, if she got some money, if it is hers or if you take it. In Mexico you pay the mordida to the police. Do you know that word?”
I nodded. The official translation of mordida is bite, which is slang for a bribe. “Luciana doesn’t have to worry about me demanding any money from her,” I said. “However, there are laws about obtaining money from ill-gotten gains, which means you’re not supposed to profit from an illegal activity.”
Marta started to explain what I had said, but Luciana seemed to already understand and replied back.
“What if Luciana just got the money?” said Marta.
“If she didn’t solicit it,” I said, “I imagine she can keep it without penalty. But since I’m not a lawyer, it would probably make sense for Luciana to tell me what happened, but have her explain it to me as a hypothetical situation.”
I could tell by Marta’s confused expression that I needed to translate my own English. “What I mean by that,” I said, “is she can say, ‘What would happen to someone else if they were given money?’ Or maybe she might ask, ‘Is it illegal if a person was just given money by another person?’ And instead of saying, ‘This happened to me,’ she could say, ‘I heard this story about a friend of mine.’”
Both Marta and Luciana were nodding to show they understood. “Sí, sí,” said Luciana, who then started talking in rapid-fire Spanish.
“She know someone whose fiancé went missing,” translated Marta. “This fiancé no have papers. He work as a day laborer. One day he get picked up for a job and never come back. Five weeks after he not come back, this lady she know get a letter with twenty-five hundred-dollar bills in it. Along with the money was a note. It say, ‘So sorry for your loss.’”
“So Luciana’s friend was mailed this money and it arrived at the address where that friend lives?”
Luciana nodded and said, “Sí.”
“Was anything in it besides the money and the note?”
Luciana’s small body and large eyes made her look like one of the children in a Margaret Keane painting. Her answer came accompanied by tears.
“Cartas amorosas,” she said, “y poesía del amor.”
My Spanish was worse than Luciana’s English, but I didn’t need a translation. “Love letters and love poetry.”
Both women nodded, and then Luciana spoke to Marta. When she finished, Marta said, “Her friend tell her this fiancé always write letters and poems to the woman. She say he have them in his wallet.”
“Do you think the missing fiancé had the woman’s address somewhere in his wallet?”
Marta translated for me, and then listened to Luciana before replying. “She sure of it. In fact, she hear the man get his mail sent to where this woman lives.”
“So her address was his mailing address,” I asked, “even though they didn’t live together?”
Both women were nodding, and then Luciana offered a further explanation that Marta translated.
“This man move around. That why his wallet is full. He keep everything in it.”
Luciana demonstrated for me the size of the wallet, extending her thumbs and fingers as far as possible.
I decided we’d done enough hypothetical buffering. “As far as I’m concerned,” I said, “that money is Luciana’s and she can do what she wants
with it.”
Luciana nodded to show she understood.
“You said Mateo was a day laborer,” I said. “Did he work out of a particular location?”
Luciana didn’t need a translation. “Home Depot Woodland Hills.”
Then she added something to Marta, who said, “He always go early to work, no later than seven. And he work every day but Sunday.”
“What are you doing tomorrow morning?” I asked Luciana.
Because of the 187 Club meeting, Lisbet and I had agreed it would be easier if we slept at our own places. From the road, I called to wish her a good night. It was clear from her tired voice that she was almost ready to sleep. We talked for a little while, and then I crooned, “‘Happy trails to you.’”
The Roy Rogers–Dale Evans Museum used to be in Victorville; I went there a few times as a kid and was sorry when I heard it closed. I suppose nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Still, I sometimes sing Roy’s saddle song to Lisbet as an homage to the past.
“The last singing cowboy,” said Lisbet.
“The horse stopped with a jerk,” I said, “and the jerk fell off.”
She gave a little laugh, then whispered, “Night, pardner.”
“Night, ma’am.”
I didn’t have any Roy Rogers or Gene Autry music on my playlist, but I wasn’t totally out of cowboys to reference. In fact, given the circumstances of the night, I think I picked just the right cowboy. My musical time machine went back to the seventies with War’s “The Cisco Kid.”
The funk washed over me and I started moving my head to the rhythms of the sax, harmonica, flute, and guitar. Sirius perked up in the back seat as I sang the refrain, “‘He drink whiskey, Pancho drink the wine.’”
And then it was Sirius offering up his own four-note phrase at the end of those lyrics, a series of little howls that made me laugh. I lowered the volume and timed my next call so that it included the refrain about whiskey and wine.
“Is your bar open?” I asked.
Seth Mann is not only my next-door neighbor, he’s my best friend. In many ways it’s a case of opposites attracting. Seth is a twenty-first-century shaman. He’s also the smartest person I know.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You’ll be drinking whiskey and I’ll be drinking wine.”
“Oh, Pancho,” I said.
“Oh, Cisco,” he replied.
We were both laughing like loons as I ended the call.
My whiskey was served in a cold rocks glass. In keeping with the evening’s motif, Seth had poured himself a merlot. Not to be outdone in the drinking department, Sirius was lapping up some brown rice served with chicken stock.
I looked at Seth expectantly, waiting for his toast before taking a sip. Usually he volunteers a funny or sage toast with our first drink.
“Here’s to staying positive,” he said, “and testing negative.”
We clinked glasses, and I took an approving sip of my nectar. “How nice to partake of a drink,” I said approvingly, “that is old enough to drink.”
“Twenty years,” agreed Seth. “Happy ongoing birthday.”
I raised my glass to show my appreciation. On my last birthday Seth had bought me a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle twenty-year-old bourbon, which he kept at his house. The bottle was being parceled out to me one drink a visit. With sixteen drinks to a bottle, I now had a dozen libations left. It was a good way to spread out a birthday, not to mention it encouraged slow, thoughtful sips.
“I’m lucky you weren’t entertaining,” I said, “and were free to bartend.”
Seth looks like a homely version of the Happy Buddha, with a big belly and shaved head, but that doesn’t seem to deter the opposite sex. I’m convinced that during his South American travels a witch doctor must have taught him how to make a potent love potion/aphrodisiac.
“I settled in for a quiet night of music and reading,” he said. “Just before you called, I was thinking a nightcap would be a welcome way to end the day.”
“I can drink to that.”
We both took another sip. Seth seemed to be enjoying his wine as much as I was enjoying my whiskey.
“I would say that this libation puts an exclamation point on the end of my day,” I said, “but I’ve never liked that expression. In fact, I’ve never liked exclamation points.”
“And how have they offended you?” asked Seth.
“They strike me as clumsy,” I said. “They scream ‘look at me.’ How many situations truly merit an exclamation point?”
“You’d prefer an interrobang?”
“I don’t know what an interrobang is.”
“It’s a glyph that combines a question mark and an exclamation point.”
I thought about that and said, “I don’t think that’s any better. I’m wondering if some language employs a punctuation mark that isn’t in your face as much as an exclamation point. I think I’d be happy for just half an exclamation point.”
“You sound like F. Scott Fitzgerald,” said Seth. “If I remember correctly, he said, ‘An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.’”
“I wonder what Zelda thought.”
“Of punctuation, I don’t know. But I’m sure she would have approved of our finishing the day with a drink. And she might have been interested in the idea of your half exclamation point. There have been others who have proposed new punctuation marks, but I don’t know of any that have been incorporated into our language for the last several hundred years.”
“What kind of new punctuation marks?” I said.
“As I remember it, half a century ago a French author wrote a book where he proposed such things as a love point and an acclamation point. I find it ironic that he also suggested we have an irony mark.”
“Maybe there should be a ‘spoken under the influence of alcohol’ mark, a symbol of a little bottle.”
Seth shrugged. “It would explain much. Maybe there’s an emoji for that. I suppose they could be considered the new punctuation marks.”
I made a rude noise and said, “Emojis are considerably worse than exclamation points.”
“You don’t like pink unicorns?”
“I prefer to stick with pink elephants, thank you.”
“You’re getting to be a curmudgeon, Gideon.”
“That’s been a longtime goal of mine.”
Sirius finished eating and came over to Seth for some scratching. “Am I still on for having Sirius over the day after tomorrow?”
I nodded. It was time for my monthly meeting with Ellis Haines. Seth pursed his lips in disapproval. He thought my meetings with Haines put a “contagion” upon my soul and brought jeopardy to my being. He was probably right about that; I was glad he cared, but I still planned to see Haines. The Weatherman refused to talk with anyone else, and the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit was counting on me to be the middleman between them and him so as to keep the lines of communication open.
My friend scratched under Sirius’s ears and down his neck, and my partner began melting under his touch. I was reminded of how grateful Emily had been for the affection I’d offered her.
“Sirius and I visited Angie’s Rescues today,” I said. “One of the dogs I spent time with was a pit bull named Emily. I was told she was used as a bait dog, which explains the hundreds of stitches all over her. And today, not much more than a week after she was mauled and beaten, her tail was thumping while I scratched her. Emily is proving a lot more forgiving of the human race than I am.”
“I’ve often wondered if Thomas Macaulay was right,” said Seth. “He said that Puritans hated bearbaiting not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”
“And I worry about me being a cynic,” I said.
“I’m afraid animal rights is a recent concept. Many of our institutions have roots in horrific spectacles. Think of the bulls and the bears of the stock market. Those two animals used to be pitted against one another. Usually it was the bear that won, but not
always. That’s why the stock market empathizes with the bull.”
“Why are your history lessons always so depressing?”
“I’m actually hoping that when it comes to animals the depths of depravity are behind us,” Seth said. “The opening ceremonies of the Roman Colosseum were about as horrific as could be imagined. Over the course of one hundred days, more than nine thousand animals were killed in spectacles of slaughter. I won’t offer up tales from those so-called blood sports, for both our sakes.”
“Almost all serial murderers start with the torturing of animals,” I said. “What happened to Emily, I consider torture.”
“I agree. I assume you’re looking for whoever was responsible for inflicting those wounds?”
“I am.”
“There are those who argue that there are cultural components to dogfighting and cockfighting, and because of that, some sort of dispensation should be afforded its participants. I’ve been in countries in Latin America and South America where cockfighting is legal. I suppose it’s not surprising that immigrants from those countries continue with such practices.”
“They’re not going to get any slack from me. In many cultures slavery was once legal. That doesn’t mean it was ever morally right. And not that long ago it was legal to beat your wife as long as you complied with the rule of thumb—whatever you were beating her with wasn’t thicker than your thumb.”
Seth extended his thumb, studying its length. He shook his head in disgust and sighed. Both of us returned to the sipping of our beverages.
“When you called me up playing music by War,” Seth said, “I didn’t expect you’d be in a pensive mood.”
“I was looking for cowboy music,” I said, “as an antidote to the 187 Club meeting.”
“It’s not easy being the ringmaster of grief,” said the shaman.
I thought about that. Seth has a way with phrases. He was right—I was the ringmaster of grief.