by Alan Drew
Ben was used to being out here, off the grid, out on the perimeter of most people’s existences. He could never really be one of these Santa Elena people, because there was a wolf inside the walls and he had been thrown to him—he and Tucker and Lucero. People knew what was happening, some of them knew who Wakeland was; they just didn’t want to know: It ruined the illusion of their safety. If the predators were here, what did this place mean anymore? Ben had been made alone at thirteen years old, the day Wakeland taught him how to breathe. He had accepted it, made a destructive alliance with it, and, just like a good Santa Elenan, pretended the wolf didn’t exist.
Ben and Tin Man switchbacked down the hill, rode the fence along Wakeland’s backyard, followed the firebreak until they came to the turnout of Junipero Road. There Ben trailered Tin Man, shut himself inside the cruiser, and called the number.
“Hello,” Wakeland’s wife said, her voice soft, friendly, until Ben’s hesitation frightened her. “Who is this?”
He almost felt bad for her, for her and her kids being dragged into this, but he didn’t mind letting her think he was the killer on the other side of the silent connection for a moment.
“I’d like to speak with Lewis,” Ben said finally.
“Who’s calling?”
“An old friend.”
“Can I tell him your name?”
“Lucero Vega,” he said.
The phone went silent for a moment, some kind of music playing in the background, a child’s voice.
“What the hell is this?” Wakeland said in a low voice.
“You said you had some information about a case.”
“Benjamin?”
“Fifteen minutes,” Ben said. “At the apartment.”
—
HE WAS THERE in five minutes, walking the shadows of the greenbelt, the wind shearing leaves from the trees. On the patio, he found the key, slid open the glass door, stepped inside, and pocketed the key. The living room was as he remembered it—the beige couch pushed against a gray-blue wall. A glass-topped coffee table, spotless except for a single tumbler, half empty and staining a ring onto the glass. The oakwood television console, the white curtains hanging open against the sliding glass door, the conch-shell table lamp: all of it the same, a fucking museum to the past. Only the pictures hanging on the wall had been updated: candy-apple-red Ferraris and artsy black-and-whites of female torsos. A Nagel print. Nothing pornographic, all within respectable bachelor-pad boundaries. Exactly the kind of pictures that appealed to teenage boys. The carpet had been changed, a lighter cream color, as if a sheen of ash had fallen over the room. There were footprints on the carpet—size ten and a half, Ben knew.
The guest bathroom had new brass faucets and white porcelain countertops. Next to the toilet was a basket of magazines, just as he remembered. Ben thumbed the stack—Car and Driver, Outside, a Penthouse with Vanessa Williams on the cover. There was a different desk in the office, a new swivel chair, the wall color changed to burgundy, the bookshelves gone. The same metal filing cabinets, though, stacked on top of one another near the closet door. He scraped one open: empty. Maybe he’d find a letter, a picture, anything solid to link Wakeland to Lucero. The next one empty, too. Of course. He checked the desk drawers, the side-table drawers near the living room couch, the cabinets in the kitchen: nothing.
The hallway was the toughest, his heart thumping his ribs, a vertigo at the edge of his vision. In his mind the room had become a sort of pale cell, hot and airless. He stood in the doorway and forced himself to look at it—the double bed, the quilt embroidered with sailboats, the throw pillows propped against the oak headboard. The sea-green walls. Was this room the same? He had no idea, had no recollection at all of the comforter, the sheets, the color of the wall, only of what happened here. Suddenly he smelled the man—his Drakkar Noir cologne, the chlorine in his pores, the tinge of vodka, and he spun around to find the hallway empty. Wakeland was with him in the room now, though, Ben could feel him, a tingling disgust on his skin. He remembered being pressed into the bed, his face crushed into the detergent-scented sheets. And then there it was, the painting; he found it on the wall. It was smaller than he remembered, the print faded and yellowed, the lone tree clinging to the rock against the crashing ocean, and he put himself there in the water, beneath the roiling surf, down into the deep cold of ebbing tides.
Ben understood the impulse to obliterate yourself, to destroy the body. He’d almost jumped from the Vincent Thomas Bridge when he was seventeen. He wanted out, out of Wakeland, out of his body, out of everything. It was his senior year, a couple of months after sleeping with Rachel, and he and Wakeland drove up to L.A. to meet with the coaches at UCLA, USC, Pepperdine, to swim for them in their Olympic-sized pools, to have them weigh him, measure his arm span, gauge the strength of his muscles, the capacity of his lungs. The first night there, Ben had woken next to Wakeland in a hotel room sweltering with forced-air heat, the sweat on Wakeland’s skin pungent. Since Rachel, Ben had realized what his body wanted, realized that everything that happened with Wakeland fought against his desire. It was as if she had knocked everything into alignment—his head, his heart, his body—and the thought of the man’s skin curdled his stomach. He slipped out of bed, lifted Wakeland’s car keys, and snuck out of the room. He tore off in the Mustang, pulling onto the 405 Freeway, veering west onto the 110 toward the ocean and down into the harbor until suddenly there was the bridge, brightly lit and arcing green over the inlet. It wasn’t until he rode over the bridge the first time that he knew what he wanted: He wanted to go into the darkness below the bridge, into that cold oblivion. He U-turned it six times over the span, each time his body telling him to pull to the side and leap over the rail, but each time the thought of Rachel stopped him. He couldn’t do that to her, no way in the world. The next day he swam for the coaches at USC, shattering his personal record.
“You talked to someone.” The voice snapped Ben out of himself. Wakeland was there now, standing in the hallway. “I thought we had an agreement.”
“We never had any agreement,” Ben said.
“My silence for yours.”
“That was a threat,” Ben said. A sixteen-year-old threat that bought sixteen years of mutual silence. “Not an agreement.”
“Who’d you talk to?” Wakeland said sharply. “A woman came to the pool today.”
“What woman?”
“She didn’t tell me her name,” Wakeland said. “I’ve left you alone, never bothered you after you came home. I’ve lived up to my end of the deal.”
“There was no deal,” Ben said, his voice rising.
“Then who was this woman?”
Natasha, Ben knew. It was Natasha.
“I haven’t said anything,” Ben said.
“Good,” Wakeland said, relief in his voice. He leaned against the hallway wall, cutting Ben off from the rest of the apartment. “I didn’t think you would. Not you.”
“Get the hell out of the way,” Ben said.
Wakeland stared at Ben for a few moments, stretching out time, and then elbowed himself off the wall and walked the other way.
When Ben made it to the living room, Wakeland was sitting in the recliner, his legs crossed, his hands clasped over his knees as if he were tied in a knot. Ben stood next to the couch, the glass coffee table separating them. Age had taken hold of Wakeland’s face. Now that he was close, Ben could see it. The man’s eyes were rheumy, the skin rimming them puffy and bluish. In the soft-white light of the side-table lamp, Ben could make out the bones beneath his skin. There was a time when the thinness of Wakeland’s face made him look fit, handsome even, but now he looked underfed and ill.
“You want a drink?” Wakeland said. “We can catch up.”
“No.”
“I knew we’d sit down with each other again,” Wakeland said. “Knew it as soon as you came back to town.”
“Coming back to town had nothing to do with you.”
“You sure about that?”
>
No, he wasn’t sure about that. Maybe he had come back because of Wakeland, some sort of gravitational pull, a lot of unfinished business. Maybe he thought being here would keep Wakeland in check, as though Ben had been hired as a security guard instead of an investigative detective. Maybe—and this, Ben thought, was the most likely—he had come back because he had the two panicked notes, the one mistake Wakeland had made, the one thing Ben possessed that made the man vulnerable. Ben came back because he had the power, and he knew that every time Wakeland saw his cruiser parked outside in the high school lot, each time Ben made the newspapers for an arrest, each and every time he rolled past Wakeland’s house in his patrol car, Coach Lewis Wakeland trembled a little.
“I know what happened to Lucero.” Ben unfolded the slip of paper he’d taken from Lucero’s body and set it on the coffee table. Wakeland glanced at it but he didn’t move, just kept one leg over the other, one hand on his knee, the other on the arm of the chair.
“Maybe you misunderstand things,” Wakeland said. “Maybe you’re not seeing them clearly.”
“I know what happened to Tucker, too.”
“You have been talking,” Wakeland said. He stood up, went into the kitchen, and made himself a drink.
“He took a bottle of aspirin because of what you did to him,” Ben said.
“What I did to him?” Wakeland spun around in the kitchen, drink in hand. “His father beat him with a leather belt. He was failing out of school, was about to be sent to the alternative school, not to mention juvie for possession, before I met him.” He huffed disdain. “What I did to him!”
He took a sip of the drink and topped it off with more vodka from the bottle that was sitting on the kitchen counter. “You boys,” Wakeland went on, shaking his head. “You’re so selfish. Every one of you. I give you so much, so much of my time, my energy.” Another sip. “I didn’t hurt you. You never said no, you never told me to stop.”
That was the problem; that had always been the problem.
“Who is the she in that note?” Ben said, pointing at the paper on the table. “She’s Lucero’s mother, right?” Ben said.
“You seemed to enjoy the attention, if I remember correctly.”
“You were jealous,” Ben said. “Jealous that Lucero had a boyfriend. You threatened to tell his mother about him being gay.”
Silence.
“Or maybe you shot Lucero,” Ben said. “Maybe you were jealous enough to do that.”
Wakeland took a seat in the recliner again.
“Maybe Lucero called your bluff,” Ben said. “Maybe he was smart enough—brave enough—to do that. Maybe you figured he was illegal and no one would care.”
Wakeland stared at him, his eyes narrowed. “No, you know that’s not it, Benjamin. You—or someone,” Wakeland said, shaking his head, “would have arrested me already if you had that kind of evidence.”
“Evidence can be made to prove a lot of things,” Ben said. “A witness says you were the last to see Lucero alive. This witness says you two were having an argument. Says there was someone up at the camp at Loma Canyon just before Lucero was shot.”
There were beads of sweat now on Wakeland’s forehead. “That boy,” Wakeland finally said. “Neil, yes?”
Ben just looked at him.
“You think I’m a monster,” Wakeland said. It was not a question, not a plea for understanding. He said it disdainfully, a declaration of Ben’s naïveté. “I’ve changed. I have a family now. Family changes things.”
“Sure,” Ben said. “A personal enlightenment.”
“I never did anything to Lucero,” Wakeland said. “Understand? What you think I did…” He shook his head. “After Tucker, I almost lost my job. I started drinking heavily. I started hating myself. There was something ugly in me.” He tapped his hand against his chest. “I started seeing a therapist. I met Diane. My life changed.”
“But you couldn’t help yourself with Lucero—”
“I loved Lucero like a son,” Wakeland said, strength back in his voice.
“You treat your son like the other boys? Like Tucker, like me?”
“I loved him too much to bring him into that ugliness,” Wakeland said, his fingers pressing against his temples now. “I did everything I could to keep him from that.”
Wakeland stood suddenly and went into the kitchen, dropping cubes into two glasses.
What did that mean? He loved Lucero enough not to hurt him? What did it mean for Ben? He had been hated? He had been nothing? Ben had convinced himself, many years ago, that some part of Wakeland had loved him. That’s what had made it bearable—that it hadn’t simply been some sort of violence.
“I did everything I could to keep him from that.” The interrogator in Ben couldn’t believe he hadn’t hit on that immediately. How could he miss that everything I could?
“No, you haven’t changed,” Ben said, shaking his head.
Wakeland had taught him to look past people’s flaws, to see around the ugliness in them. Shaking down drug dealers in L.A., Ben could see past the murderous bravado, the threat in the language and the gun, to find the child raised by the junkie mother, the child who witnessed his father’s murder. It made him a good cop; he knew when to arrest a kid and when to ride him home to his family. With Wakeland, Ben had found the father he needed, buried in the predator. Wakeland recognized that need and fed it, while the boy pretended that what happened to his body didn’t matter. Ben hadn’t known how to measure one pain against the alleviation of another. He didn’t know that his gratitude could have limits.
“I think you did everything you could not to hurt Lucero,” Ben said, “but you still couldn’t help yourself.”
It took a few moments, but Wakeland returned to the room with two glasses of vodka, his face bleached and drawn. He clinked a sweating glass on the coffee table for Ben and then fell into his chair and gulped down half the tumbler.
“You know the greatest joy in my life?” Wakeland said. “Watching my son in bed while he’s sleeping.” He took another gulp. “I do it often, sneaking up after he’s fallen asleep, sitting in the chair in the corner. I’ve never once had that feeling with him. The feeling I had with you. Never. I know what I’d do to a man who touched him. I can imagine exactly what I’d do to such a man.”
Wakeland lifted the drink to his lips, his hand shaking.
“I often think that if I can stay there, in my son’s room, if I can just keep that feeling about him, the other feelings will go away, forever.”
“But they don’t.”
“I remember you as a boy,” Wakeland said. “Probably better than you do yourself. I can see the boy’s body in yours right now. There are shadows of it, hints.” He ran his fingers across his own neck. “The ring of your clavicle, the bony shoulders, the length of your torso.” He was silent for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I still have the feeling toward the boy you were.”
It took everything in Ben’s power to not reach for the drink. He had to remind himself that he was not that boy, not anymore.
“And Lucero?” Ben said now. “You had those feeling toward him.”
“You try to be good,” Wakeland said. “You tell God you’ll be good, ask him to help you…”
“But you can’t stop the feeling.”
“It won’t go away,” Wakeland said. “The feeling. It won’t leave me alone.” He put the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I never wanted to hurt him,” he said. “I didn’t like that boy Neil. His dyed hair, his pierced ears. He was a bad student, no ambition. Lucero had nothing, but he wanted out of that shack and he knew he had to work harder than anyone else to get out. He was tougher than any Santa Elena kid I’ve ever coached. That kid Neil wasn’t good enough for Lucero.”
“Tell me what happened, or I can easily make this a murder investigation.”
Wakeland leaned back in the chair. “Yes, I threatened to tell Esperanza about Lucero and Neil,” Wakeland said. “He told me he didn’t care—said go ahe
ad. I didn’t expect that from him. He was such a good boy, never argued.” He hesitated, took a deep breath. “The address. I was letting them use the address to this place, to go to school. I told him I wouldn’t let him use it anymore.”
“There’s more than one way to kill someone,” Ben said.
“I thought he’d come back,” Wakeland said, pounding the arm of the chair once. “I didn’t think he’d do this. I loved him. I loved all of you boys.”
“That’s not love.”
“I know things about you nobody knows, Benjamin. I know who you truly are, and I never judged you. Other people would, but not me. We all need that—a place not to be judged.”
Wakeland stood, picked up the drink on the coffee table, and brought it over to Ben. He held the drink in front of Ben, the ice clinking against the glass.
“I was a child,” Ben said.
“You were a teenager, a young man,” Wakeland said.
“I hated myself and you knew it.”
“You were so sad,” Wakeland said, nodding. “Your stepfather wanted your mother but not you. I practically raised you.”
Wakeland smiled at Ben, and Ben felt almost like the child again. The child running his hands along the man’s back, kneading out the knots in the muscles; the child who closed his eyes and let the man do things to him; the child who couldn’t say no and had to kill himself by drowning in a tiny picture hanging on a bedroom wall.
“Lucero could have been killed by the serial,” Wakeland said. “I have a family, kids now. You don’t want to hurt them; they haven’t done anything. Everything with us is in the past. If you arrested me, it would all get dragged up; I’d have no reason not to tell it all. Think of everything you’d have to explain. How would you explain, a veteran detective like you, not doing anything all these years?”