Mission Canyon

by Meg Gardiner

  I said, ‘‘The blond man at the Biltmore, the one who gave Brand the minidisk. What does he have to do with all of this?’’

  Chris stared at the disk for a moment. ‘‘Mickey Yago.’’

  ‘‘Pardon?’’

  He looked up. ‘‘The blond’s name is Mickey Yago. He’s from L.A., and he’s a career criminal. He is not a person you three want to have any contact with.’’

  Jesse said, ‘‘What kind of career criminal?’’

  ‘‘Narcotics, porn, extortion. He’s sly, and he’s violent, and he doesn’t work alone. Stay away from him.’’

  I crossed my arms. We were all staring at Chris.

  I said, ‘‘Who does he work with? Franklin Brand?’’

  ‘‘That’s under investigation. I’m telling you this to help you protect yourselves.’’

  ‘‘At the motel Brand asked if Mickey sent me, if I was one of his flunkies,’’ I said. ‘‘Who are Mickey’s flunkies, Chris? The fat man and skinny girl in the Mercedes SUV who stole my wallet?’’

  Chris tapped his pencil against the desk.

  I said, ‘‘You have any more names for us to stay away from?’’

  ‘‘Fine. Win Utley and Cherry Lopez. These are all people you should be vaccinated against; I’m not kidding.’’ His face looked strained. ‘‘Brand killed your brother, Dr. Sandoval, and he . . . Jesse, he did this to you. Now you bring me evidence that perhaps he did it intentionally.’’

  Adam said, ‘‘He did.’’

  ‘‘My point,’’ Chris said, ‘‘is that Brand may be more dangerous than we thought. And he may be connected to people who regard violence as ordinary business.’’

  My mind jumped forward on the playlist. Porn. Extortion. ‘‘Is Mickey Yago involved with the attempt to threaten Jesse?’’

  Chris pointed a finger at me. ‘‘A warning, Evan. Brand may come after you for the disk.’’

  ‘‘You think he’ll find out who I am?’’

  ‘‘I would take the possibility seriously.’’ His eyes were solemn. ‘‘Be wary.’’

  After signing my statement, I walked out into the gray morning. Across the street, the white walls of the courthouse blended into the gloom. I felt as though I’d grabbed an exposed electric wire.

  Jesse and Adam were waiting on the corner. Adam was running a hand across his short hair, staring at the sidewalk.

  When I walked up I heard him asking, ‘‘Will Ramseur follow through?’’

  Jesse said, ‘‘Yeah, because I’ll pester him.’’

  Adam gazed into the distance. ‘‘I can’t . . .’’ He fingered his crucifix. ‘‘I have no words to tell you how . . . appalled I feel that—’’

  ‘‘Stop.’’

  ‘‘You were injured so badly because Brand went after Isaac.’’

  ‘‘It’s a bitch, buddy. Life’s a bitch. And Franklin Brand is her suckling dog. But my injury is not your fault. Don’t you dare blame Isaac, or yourself.’’

  Adam looked at him and clearly did not believe it. He walked away.

  ‘‘I’ll drop you at home,’’ Jesse said. But he didn’t.

  We drove in silence. The ashen sky weighed on us. The stereo was playing Riding with the King. Clapton and B. B. King, dueling blues guitars. The car bounced over dips in the street, Jesse driving just over the limit. His car had a big engine, a guy’s engine, and he drove smoothly. But too fast today.

  I didn’t speak. He needed company, not conversation. He drove toward the mountains. They rose, massive and dark, into the clouds. We drove by the Old Mission and on past Rocky Nook Park. The live oaks stretched overhead, gnarled and dark. I knew where we were heading. To Mission Canyon. The place we never went, the pain he never spoke about.

  We crossed Foothill Road and broke out of the clouds into sunlight, throbbing greenery, the sandstone shining on the mountains, the sky above La Cumbre Peak a lacquered blue. The road split and started climbing along the west flank of the canyon. After a few minutes the houses died out. Below us, oaks and sycamores lined a creekbed littered with boulders. Down the canyon it was a million-dollar view to the Botanic Garden, the city, and the sea, with the cloud layer unrolling over the coastline like wool. Jesse slowed.

  ‘‘Right here, Isaac passed me. He goes, ‘Last one to the top buys the beer.’ ’’

  We were going to trace their final journey together. ‘‘It was a gorgeous day, a hell of a day. It’s a mile up the canyon to this point, and we were pumping, really gunning it. Jesus, Isaac went balls to the wall. Always.’’

  The road climbed steeply. The hillside rose on our left and fell away sharply to our right, through tall grass down to the creekbed. There was no guardrail.

  Jesse pulled over and cut the engine. An unsettling quiet flowed around us.

  ‘‘I pulled ahead of him by a couple of feet,’’ he said. ‘‘Twenty-four inches, that was the difference between us. The only sound was our breathing, and the pedals turning. Until we heard the BMW.’’

  I rested my hand on his shoulder.

  ‘‘High revs. The engine was just screaming; he must have been redlining it. I always thought it was because Brand was too busy getting blown to shift—you know, she was leaning across the stick. But that wasn’t it. He was accelerating at us.’’

  His hands gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white.

  ‘‘The noise, it just filled me up. And it was . . . bang, I went into the windshield.’’ His muscles were rigid. ‘‘He hit us so hard it blew my shoes off. I don’t think they ever found them. And Isaac had a necklace, a crucifix Adam gave him. Just gone.’’

  He looked toward the edge of the road.

  ‘‘I went over the side, into the air for what felt like forever. I hear this sound, and realize it’s me hitting the ground. I’m going ass over ankles with the bike, just going over and over. Until I blacked out.’’

  He clutched the steering wheel.

  ‘‘When my vision came back I was facedown on top of the bike. Dirt up my nose and grass in my mouth. I knew I was hurt and it was bad. I lifted my head and saw Isaac. He was just uphill from me, on his back. His arms were thrown out from his sides. He wasn’t moving; his face was turned away. I called to him. I tried to get up but couldn’t, kept calling his name. His head . . . he . . . all this blood . . .’’

  He pulled off his sunglasses.

  ‘‘I saw . . . thought I saw his hand move. Was sure. He was fighting. I tried to get to him and I . . .’’ He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘‘Just wanted to hold his hand. Tell him he wasn’t alone, hang on. He was six feet from me, right there.’’

  He fought for his voice. ‘‘And I couldn’t fucking move.’’

  He backhanded his fist into the door. ‘‘Brand put me in the dirt with a broken back, and Isaac died alone.’’

  He hit the door again and fumbled for the handle, shoved the door open, and swung his legs onto the pavement. He wrangled the wheelchair from the backseat and hopped on.

  I got out. We were parked at the edge of the hill, and I watched my step. I walked around the car to see him sideways on the road, gripping his push-rims to keep from rolling downhill. I looked at him with alarm.

  ‘‘Jesse—’’

  ‘‘Don’t, Evan.’’

  God, how I hated this. I bit my tongue, kept my hands at my sides, didn’t step toward him. He let nobody push him, ever.

  He set his shoulders and swung around, cutting an S-CURVE, working uphill to get around the car. He aimed for the side of the road and I followed. I heard an engine up the hill. He headed off the asphalt onto the shoulder, stopping near the dropoff. I watched to see that he set his brakes. A pickup truck curved past, heading downhill.

  I knelt down next to him. ‘‘Don’t punish yourself.’’

  ‘‘You don’t understand. I’m not talking about guilt; I’m talking about what Brand did to Isaac. He stole the only solace he could have had at the final moment of his life.’’

  He stared over the edge, his eyes co
balt in the sunlight.

  ‘‘I hate him, Evan.’’ He pressed his fist against his heart. ‘‘So much that it gives me chest pain. It’s like this thing inside me, a snake, with teeth, and it crawls and chews on me.’’

  I put my hand on his arm.

  ‘‘I thought I was past it; I truly did. Told myself, Life’s short; don’t waste it on anger. Hatred only gives him power. And I didn’t want him to have any power over me. But . . .’’ His voice trailed off. ‘‘But he did it intentionally. If I see him again, if I get close to him, I don’t know what I’ll do.’’

  He shook his head, as though pushing away the thought. Exhaled.

  ‘‘Adam’s the one we have to worry about. You saw him outside the police station, that look on his face.’’

  ‘‘Like the guilt train had derailed inside his head,’’ I said.

  He ran a hand through his hair. ‘‘He’s always had trouble with what happened to me. Now it’ll be ten times worse.’’

  I held on to his arm.

  ‘‘Half the time he thinks it’s horrible that I got my ticket punched, no exchanges, no refunds, lifetime guarantee. The other half he sees me and thinks, Why can’t that be Isaac?’’ He looked down the hillside. ‘‘I can’t walk, big deal. I’m here. Isaac isn’t. And I agree with him. I am so goddamned glad to be alive. But how could I ever tell him that?’’

  I had no answer.

  ‘‘Keep your ears open. He won’t talk to me, but maybe he’ll talk to you.’’

  ‘‘I don’t know.’’

  ‘‘Evan, he loves you like a sister. You didn’t know that? Because you love me. You make me happy, and he thinks the world of you because of that.’’

  ‘‘Oh, Jesse.’’

  He touched my face. ‘‘You do, you know.’’

  Raising an arm to his face, he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his T-shirt.

  I said, ‘‘Can we continue this conversation in the car?’’

  ‘‘Too much catharsis for one day? Yeah, fine.’’

  He flipped off the brakes. Half-consciously I put a hand out in front of him. He gave me a wry look.

  ‘‘Planning to throw yourself in front of me if I start to go over the edge?’’

  ‘‘Something like that.’’

  He spun sharply. ‘‘Don’t worry. Once was enough.’’

  He pushed onto the asphalt, and I felt myself easing down. Until he swung out into the road.

  ‘‘What are you doing?’’ I said.

  He looked up and down the hill. ‘‘What do you see?’’

  ‘‘You in the middle of the road, with no way to evade oncoming traffic.’’

  ‘‘My point exactly.’’

  My toes were cramping. I looked down the hill. The road bent around the mountainside. With the trees, brush, and curves, I couldn’t see anything until almost the bottom of the canyon. I thought about the hit-and-run: Jesse and Isaac taking off after work and heading out to ride through wooded back roads.

  ‘‘Brand tracked you down,’’ I said.

  "Exactly. But how the hell did he know where to find us?"

  11

  ‘‘Let me get the chair,’’ I said.

  He started to protest, but, perhaps seeing sweat on my upper lip, acquiesced. He transferred to the driver’s seat and I put the wheelchair into the back. I barely got in before he jammed the car in gear and pulled out.

  ‘‘Brand tracked us. He hunted us down.’’ He drove uphill, looking for a place to turn around. ‘‘How? Did Isaac mention we were going riding to people at work? Maybe Brand called Firedog and they told him.’’

  The road twisted upward for a quarter mile and dead-ended. He turned around.

  ‘‘He must have watched Isaac leave work, and followed him. He waited until we cleared downtown, until we got into the hills, when nobody else was in sight.’’

  His voice was returning to normal, but he was now consciously ignoring the callousness of the facts: Brand knew all along that Jesse was riding with Isaac, and didn’t care.

  ‘‘And there’s a big piece of the puzzle I don’t understand. ’’ He gave me a stark look.

  I gave it back. ‘‘The woman.’’

  ‘‘You got it.’’

  Mystery number one. Who was the woman in the car with Franklin Brand?

  ‘‘What did she do after the crash? She certainly didn’t leap out and try to help us. And what does that tell you?’’ he said.

  It hit me. ‘‘That she was Brand’s accomplice.’’

  ‘‘From the start.’’

  That’s when his cell phone started ringing. It was in the glove compartment. I got it and answered, ‘‘Jesse Blackburn’s phone.’’

  ‘‘Jesse Blackburn’s boss,’’ Lavonne Marks said. ‘‘Jesse Blackburn’s late.’’

  I cringed. ‘‘Hold on.’’

  ‘‘No time. Tell him to get his keister into the office, pronto.’’

  I ran out to the curb in front of my house with clothes for him: a button-down shirt, a sport coat, and a tie. He was two hours late for work and didn’t have time to drive home, didn’t even have time to get out of the car and come inside to change.

  I saw him pulling off his T-shirt. My neighbor Helen Potts, watering her plants with a handheld sprinkler, gave him the gimlet eye. When I opened the driver’s door and she saw him bare chested, the sprinkler veered wildly. Maybe she thought his jeans were coming off next.

  I handed him the shirt. He whipped it on and started buttoning it up.

  ‘‘Lavonne’s going to kill me.’’ He stretched his neck to do the top button on the shirt. ‘‘Tie.’’

  I handed it over. He looked at it, said, ‘‘Tweety Bird?’’

  ‘‘The alternative was a happy face. With a bullet hole through its forehead.’’

  He started knotting. ‘‘You’re confiscating my joke ties?’’

  ‘‘As a public service.’’ I handed him the jacket.

  He threw it on the passenger seat and fired up the engine. ‘‘I’ll call later.’’

  The tires squealed. I watched him go, thinking that Lavonne would understand. She would grumble at him, because Sanchez Marks was her pride and passion, built up over two decades from the sole practice she started as an ungainly girl from Philly, barreling her way into Santa Barbara’s genteel legal fraternity. She demanded excellence from everyone at the firm, most of all herself. But she wouldn’t kill Jesse for being late, not today, for beneath her brisk intensity lay a soft spot for his heart and tenacity.

  I ran my fingers through my hair. A grab bag of fears rattled in my mind. Biggest was the thought that Brand had confederates. If he was working with Mickey Yago, and if they wanted to intimidate Jesse, how far would they go?

  I turned toward my garden gate. As I did, a sports car cruised up the street, honking and flashing its headlights. It was a little red Mazda with Oklahoma plates. An arm poked out the driver’s window, waving.

  I stood rooted to the sidewalk. She’d already seen me. It was too late to run, and if I dove into the hedge, Helen Potts would rat me out.

  The car pulled up and a woman jumped out, squealing, ‘‘Evan!’’

  It was my cousin Taylor Delaney Boggs. She skipped toward me, arms extended, shivering her fingers like a Fosse dancer. Her nails matched the red paint on the Mazda.

  She said, ‘‘Hello, darling.’’

  That’s darling, rhymes with marlin.

  And she was on me, gym-strong arms rocking me back and forth, one-two, like a metronome. Her Talbots ensemble was crisply pressed. Her honey brown highlights rose above her scalp like solar flares riding a trail of hair spray.

  Her nails gripped my shoulders. ‘‘Look at you, Californian to the last inch.’’ She smoothed a lock of hair away from my eyes. ‘‘This is such an adorable little hairstyle. It looks like you . . . jumped out of a plane.’’

  ‘‘When did you get in?’’

  ‘‘Night before last, drove from Oklahoma City.’’ She stared a
t me with eyes the color of blueberry pie. ‘‘You don’t sound surprised to see me. Who told?’’

  ‘‘Brian.’’

  She stamped her foot. ‘‘Spoilsport.’’

  Jesus, Rapture me, I thought.

  ‘‘Ed Eugene’s working seven-on, seven-off on one of y’all’s offshore platforms. It’s amazing you can see them from the beach. After all this time with him commuting to the North Sea, now I can go and wave to him.’’

  She tilted her head. Waiting. ‘‘Well? Aren’t you going to ask me in?’’

  I felt myself gesturing toward the garden gate, heard my voice inviting her in. I was trapped. Whatever I said, whatever she saw, would be reported to my family within twenty-four hours. But I had no reason to refuse. When I was seventeen, I’d told her I had leprosy. So I’d used that excuse right up. She was the nosiest, talkiest woman west of the Mississippi, and she was moving onto my turf.

  Walking along the path, she pointed at the Vincents’ house. ‘‘Who lives there?’’

  ‘‘My college roommate.’’ Telling myself, Don’t volunteer information. Name, rank, serial number, soldier.

  ‘‘How sweet,’’ Taylor said. ‘‘And she lives in that big old place all by herself?’’

  ‘‘With her husband and baby.’’

  She nodded, storing the fact away, saying, ‘‘Speaking of babies, Kendall’s only five months along and she’s gained forty pounds.’’ Kendall was another cousin. ‘‘But you know what Aunt Julie says. When Kendall’s pregnant, buy stock in KFC.’’

  She paused for breath, smiling at me. ‘‘And what about you?’’

  So there we had it, a new record: from hello to when will you breed? in under two minutes. I opened the French doors and ushered her inside.

  She clapped her hands. ‘‘Well, isn’t this just as cute as can be?’’

  Here was the trouble with Taylor: While she was the world’s biggest gossip and buttinsky, she had a witchy ability to shield her own life from scrutiny. There were no scandals in her past, no teenage peccadilloes, no story about her barfing at Grandma and Granddad’s fiftieth-anniversary picnic. No, that would be me. She had gotten straight As. She starred in school plays. When she came out, it was as a debutante, not a lesbian. She had a church wedding, and if her husband had a hick name, so did my male cousins, and if his job left grease under his fingernails, well, honk if you love the oil business; that’s what made Oklahoma great. Taylor had no flip side. Nobody told stories about her. We had a gossip gap.