Faulkner had said not a word. None of this could have been foreseen; there was nothing he could have done to stop it after it began.
“And I am told,” intoned Hanberry gravely, “that you called one of our customers a meat whistle.”
That bitch.
“No, sir,” said Faulkner, speaking at last. “It was the customer who called me a meat whistle.”
Hanberry straightened his papers, stood up. “The customer is always right, Faulkner. You’re fired.”
Someone was going to fall on his sword. It was not going to be Roger C. Hanberry.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Music Lessons Lost
Peedner was in no rush. They’d kept the son of a bitch overnight just for drill. Now, at his order, they’d brought him up to the interrogation room. Peedner looked through the oneway glass.
Henry, Richard Hudson, forty-three, not only smelled of gunpowder, he was covered with blood. On his hands, on his shoes, on his knees. And his fingerprints were all over the room in question, the drainpipe, on the wall he’d scaled down.
No weapon had been found. Not yet. But he had been caught trying to escape. In the alley behind the house.
Ferguson came up, handed Peedner some papers. “It’s Benjamin’s blood all over him.”
Peedner looked at the lab results. “Thanks, Tom.”
Again he peered through the one-way glass. Henry was handcuffed, partially illuminated by the single shaded overhead lamp throwing down a narrow cone of light.
Some philosophies held there were no accidents. That what a man allowed was no different than what he caused. Eastern bullshit. Yet, if he’d gotten rid of the fucking Sundance Kid when he’d known Dick was slipping out of control— Fuck that. Dick shouldn’t have been out of control. Or did he mean Butch Cassidy?
Peedner entered interrogation room 3. It was a large, square room, twenty-five feet on a side with a high ceiling. Sound echoed all around, and his footsteps reverberated as he stopped in the grit on the floor.
Henry didn’t even turn around. “That you, Lew?”
Peedner couldn’t help the gloating tone that entered his speech. “It sure is, Dick.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Of course not.” Peedner walked around the table, looked down at his old partner. “Benjamin’s blood all over you, that’s just a coincidence.”
“You assholes kept me here all night.”
“What do we assholes know? We’re just cops.”
“You know me.”
“You smell like gunpowder, Dick.”
“I went into a room where a man had just been shot. You know I wouldn’t just kill someone.”
“Maybe he needed killing.” Peedner stared into Henry’s eyes. He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.
“If only Elton Reese had been a white man, Lew.”
Yes. If only Elton Reese had been a white man. Then it would have been commendation time. Lew and I would’ve been heroes. And Lew would have long since been a captain.
I had broken a cop’s primary unwritten directive: Never get personally involved. Police work is a team effort. Let the team do its thing. Just do your little part and forget about the big picture. Justice is abstract, not concrete, not your concern.
But I’d never been able to forget Elton Reese and the lives he’d destroyed. The fact that he’d been sentenced to California State Prison at Sacramento was not satisfactory. Though after a while I’d allowed it to slip out of mind.
When the Twelfth Street witness mentioned the bag, it all came back. I knew it was Reese. And I remembered where he had lived before prison.
The findings of the board were stark and unemotional. In three minutes I’d reduced the codebook to pulp.
As far as Harold Crownes was concerned, I’d crushed his alveolar process and shattered his maxilla. And knocked out most of his upper teeth at the same time. They made a big deal out of the fact that he was sixty-three. Soon Cha Kim was eight.
In the matter of Elton Reese, the board decided I’d taken matters into my own hands. I made no apologies. And I make no apologies. They were right. I was filled with an unprofessional, biblical rage. Moses did not come down the mountain and file a grievance report. He smashed the evil he beheld.
When I heard that scream, I took the stairs two at a time until I reached the third floor.
I found Reese in a small, front-facing room, filthy, illuminated by a dim bulb on a wire and some candles. Garbage was all over the place. Beer cans, pizza boxes. He looked up at me from his position on the floor, near the wall.
Pants around his knees, he knelt between the legs of little Soon Cha Kim. His half-erect cock dangled, red, and in his right hand was a small knife. The little girl was motionless, one arm to her side, the other flung over her head. I didn’t know if she were alive or dead. There was blood all over.
Reese looked up at me, raised his hands in the air, and grinned. Grinned. “I guess you got me, lawman. I surrender,” he said. Then he shrugged.
I don’t know if it was the grin or the shrug. My first bullet pierced the frontal bone of his skull above his right eye and exited through the left occipital bone. The force of that round turned his head to the left as it went through.
The second bullet penetrated the glabella, where the cranium knits at the center of the forehead. Because the second bullet entered at a thirty-degree angle, it did not make exit but instead ricocheted round and round inside the skull, plowing through lots of tissue. His music lessons were gone before he hit the deck. The third and fourth bullets were superfluous. The third through the left sphenoid bone, the fourth through the left temporal bone.
That’s what they hung me on. The first two might have had legal justification, lethal threat, imminent danger. But three and four were personal. And cops don’t get personal. They just take care of business.
Further examinations almost proved that the vicious kick he’d received to his face, shattering his chin, scattering his teeth, and dislocating his jaw, had been rendered posthumously.
That was all they wrote for me. Judges, juries, and executioners usually constitute three separate departments. I should have received the Edwin P. Smallwood Los Angeles County Municipal Efficiency Prize. Oh, well.
Instead, the world was informed that the reprehensible actions committed, and the Cro-Magnon who’d committed them had no place in modern Los Angeles law enforcement. My admin leave was canceled and I was encouraged to retire and I did. I shook a lot of hands on the way out.
Soon Cha Kim survived. Now she’d be twenty-two or twenty-three, I guess. I hope she’s long forgotten my name and the reasons she might remember it.
Lew was a different story. He was a third-generation cop and had nowhere to go and a baby on the way. I told the board he had nothing to do with any of my actions. But community activists made hay, and matters of blood, long diluted, returned full strength. Lew accepted reprimand and was reduced in rank. And it had been a hard road for him ever since. I knew he hated me. I didn’t blame him.
The hard decisions in life are not often clear choices between black and white. They are between white and off-white, between black and dark gray. And so, between expunging Elton Reese and maintaining Lew’s career trajectory, my decision had been instinctive, instantaneous.
There was a knock at the door, and another officer entered the room, handed papers to Lew, turned around, and left.
That would probably be my negative GSR.
Lew frowned. It was my negative GSR.
Lew rubbed his face. “Okay, Dick. So what do you know about Artie Benjamin?”
“Can we undo the cuffs, here?”
Lew unlocked them and blood rushed, pins and needles, back into my hands.
“What do you know about Benjamin?”
I’d had time to think about everything. As they hauled me to the station in the rat wagon. I’d waited for ball four and taken strike three. And I’d known better. Lynette had set me up. Pure and s
imple.
Had I loved her? Yes. We had our brief stay in paradise. Had she loved me? Yes. Yes. As best she could. I would always believe it.
Now there was nothing.
What did all this make me?
Someone who cast a long shadow at sundown, someone with the infinite capability to fool himself, someone indistinguishable from the most ordinary and fallible of men.
“So what do I know about Benjamin?” I laughed and part of me died.
A couple of hours later they cut me loose. I felt like a public moron, but it was a nice afternoon; it was warm and the sun came down. The long, straight lines of my Cadillac cheered me up a bit. I went home, took a long shower, changed clothes.
Who killed Jerry Shunk and the other lawyer? Follow the money. Benjamin dies, Lynette inherits. With a Shunk document aiding and abetting. For a piece, of course. And who knew the full dimension of payment? No doubt the fool had a dream. So Jerry’s ticket was punched and his claim set aside permanently. Hell, I was surprised she didn’t ask me to do the job. For a piece after probate. Most likely she hadn’t gotten around to it.
Which left Arnuldo. Unless there was someone else with his beak in the pie, Arnuldo was doing her killing. And if that were true, his days were numbered as well, he was a loose end, he was playing on the freeway. I hoped a Cadillac wouldn’t have to run him down.
Lynette, spider woman, had a plan. At some point, there would be a last man standing. Then that last man would have an accident. She would play the innocent beauty card and bluff her way through.
I picked up the Times at the Country Store. The paper was thin as a widow. The big story was the murder spree in Beverly Hills. Upstanding citizens pined for days of yore and John Wayne justice. The stricken widow, Judy Benjamin, had gone into seclusion. An unidentified man had been questioned and released.
Cool. I was famous in a nonfamous way. But seclusion had an address. Big Sur.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Franklin Closes the Deal
As he walked into St. Paul of Tarsus Church on Sunday morning, Franklin Tillman’s eye was caught by a white 1969 Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible crossing Gardner, heading east on Hollywood. He’d owned one just like it. For a second he wondered if he were in the Cadillac. Maybe he was. Time was all mixed up. But then he was back on the steps. He entered the church.
The letter he had received from Francie’s brother had crushed him in a way he had never imagined.
Dear Mr. Franklin,
I am writing you on behalf my sister, Francie. I have terrible news. Francie was killed in accident last week coming home from hospital visiting our sister. She was crossing Rojas Blvd in central Manila when a truck no brakes hit her. She was thrown long distance and landed very hurtful. She was conscious but no pain then she died. Before she passed she spoke me her love from you and she said she would carry that love to the Lord. Francie want very much be your wife. A priest on the street gave her last rites. Then she went to the Lord. I know she loved you very much because she mentioned you often. I wish I am not the bearing of such sad news. She will be buried in her home province, Nueva Ecija, tomorrow. Prayers to you. She said you loved the Lord.
Sincerely,
Alfonso D. Corro
Franklin had been married forty years. The relationship had been difficult. He had done the right thing, raising his family, sticking the marriage out. That’s what a man did.
He had no idea what love was. Perhaps a transitory condition necessary to launch your ship, a billion other ships. Perhaps a condition best appreciated from afar. Up close, his marriage had been a wan neutrality, the company of an intimate stranger.
Then Abigail had died. His great secret was his relief, communicated to no one. He saw things more clearly now; she had been a good woman. If only she’d married someone she loved. He wasn’t glad she was gone, but he didn’t miss her, either.
And then the miracle of Francie. The glorious miracle of Francie’s love, Francie’s regard, her peculiar Filipino sense of humor and choice of words.
That old line of bullshit, you’re only as old as you feel, had been revealed as the truth. He made his muscle in the mirror. And goddam, there was still something there! Still something there!
He wanted to dance, he wanted to see plays, he wanted to see films, he wanted to hear music, he bought a bicycle at Pep Boys even though the cute little Mexican girl at the check stand told him he’d kill himself.
Then the letter from her brother. Francie. Dead. Run down on the streets of Manila. Dying right there as the world gawked, as the jitneys jostled noisily through traffic.
He had never cried like that before in his life. Not when his dad went, not when his mother went two years later.
Oh, Dad, said Betty, putting her arms around him as the tears rolled down the eroded channels of his face. Age, so recently lifted from his shoulders, fell heavily back.
Dr. Nguyen had prescribed something to ease anxiety, but he had thrown the pills away when Betty left. Taking those medications would erase Francie. Would diminish the size of her loss, reduce the clarity of his suffering.
He had been unable to sleep, try as he might. Day for night, night for day, it was all jumbled up and then the radio said it was Sunday. Time for church. But with his confusion came a peculiar sense, that for the first time in his life, his prayers had weight, had substance, that someone was actively listening. After long negotiations, he had hammered out a deal with the Creator. It was preposterous and against all reason. Reversing time’s arrow. It was a deal only the Creator could honor.
Lord, grant Francie her life and take mine. Grant Francie her life and take mine. Grant Francie her life and take mine. Grant Francie her life and take mine.
Somehow, the circularity of this thought provided comfort for him and rendered the impossible possible. When he’d greeted Reverend Jenkins that morning, Francie’s mantra underlay the conversation, resuming stature at pauses in the flow of words. Reverend Jenkins’s brains had about fallen out. He was always losing things. He’d lost his car at the car wash. Grant Francie her life and take mine. Grant Francie her life and take mine.
At the Consecration of the Mass, when the Eucharist was held high for the world to see His triumph—grant Francie her life and take mine—Franklin had felt a twinge in his neck. He had turned his head to the right, then to the left to clear his discomfort. As he looked left, he saw Francie across the aisle, two rows back. There was no doubt in his heart.
A great force rose up and thrust him to his feet in exclamation. “JOY! JOY! JOY!” he cried, neck corded, his voice ringing around the nave, staring at his beloved, unquestionably alive. The deal had gone through! As promised! He took one step toward her and suddenly he was on the marble floor, staring up into a circle of faces.
And there she was! There she was! Gazing down at him with utter tenderness, the tenderness he had searched for his entire life. He reached his hand toward her, it seemed to take forever, pushing through thick air, but he got there and she took it between her own. She smelled of jasmine.
Josefina Reyes Corro, a food service worker at the Manila mission, looked down on the old man. Who did he think she was? That he had died loving her, loving her very personally, his eyes startlingly blue and penetrating, was beyond doubt.
Miss Corro would remember this moment her entire life and would never fail to offer a prayer for the old gentleman who had unaccountably loved her so.
Though her trip to the United States had been funded by the Hollywood congregation in return for twenty devoted years of service to the mission, she would always believe that the Lord had sent her to Los Angeles to hold Mr. Tillman’s hand as he passed into the Presence. How dearly she loved the Lord. How dearly she loved the Lord.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Arnuldo Goes Down to the Beach
The Pacific rolled toward Hawaii and she watched it go. Only a thousand people lived in Big Sur, she knew three of them, they worked at the store, already she was bore
d. But a good bored. She inhaled her Virginia Slim.
Artie was gone. Never again would she have to look up into those hairy nostrils while he lay atop her, huffing and puffing, the little engine that could, conveying a nut to the top of the hill.
What would she miss? Moments. Moments here and there. Moments at the beginnings of things, when she didn’t know who he really was. When he was a Las Vegas impresario, winning awards, important.
She heard clattering from the kitchen. Arnuldo, audibly pouting. How much attention could she pay?
She flicked her cigarette over the side, watched it fall until it disappeared about halfway down. What had Artie said? Two hundred and eleven feet, give or take something or other. And if you squared a and divided or multiplied times b, you found it took three seconds to reach the rocks. Then there was something called terminal velocity, but that didn’t figure in until . . . until something.
She’d underestimated her growing disinterest in Arnuldo. In the fog of events, she’d imagined dropping him off some comfortable distance down the road. With a nice piece of change. And her gratitude. And that would be it. But now she was feeling impatient.
Men. What was it with them? From Caesar the emperor to Cesar the busboy. They really wanted just one thing. To be pedestaled and adored. And blown. That wasn’t going to happen. Adoration, anyway.
The screen door slid open and shut, Arnuldo appeared, set his butterfly knife on the railing, lit up a Viceroy.
He gazed on her perfection. They had made love last night but his mind had not been free.
Sharing Judy with Mr. Benjamin had been barely tolerable. Now Mr. Benjamin was at rest. But Henry? To allow his mind even to drift into that vicinity caused a red rage and a bright pain that twisted him physically.
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