“Mr. Berber?”
“Yes?”
The man leaned forward, coming fully into being before Xavier’s eyes. He had an oblong head, which was bald and marked by two liver spots. His glasses had perfectly round lenses way too large for his face, and his waxen smile had forgotten the humor that spawned it.
“My name is Arlen, Arlen Johns,” Xavier said. “I’m a deacon of the Interfaith Church of Redemption.”
The vapid smile broadened slightly, gaining no sincerity at all.
“A deacon?”
“I’ve come here on a church mission,” Xavier said. “You are Clay Berber, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Can I sit with you for a few moments?”
Berber was probably in his late sixties, but he might have been eighty by the way he held himself. The older man seemed to consider Xavier’s request in earnest, weighing all of the consequences of the pending decision.
“What is it that you want, Mr.…?”
“Johns.”
“What is it that you want, Mr. Johns?”
“Can I sit down?”
Once again the old skull cogitated. After deep consideration it nodded its assent.
Xavier lowered himself into the far seat, taking on, in his heart, the role of a church deacon.
He returned the old man’s cold smile.
“A woman came to us through an intermediary,” Xavier said. “Her name is Charlotte Moran.”
Maintaining his vagueness, Clay Berber nodded.
“She lived at the home of a woman named Sedra Landcombe twenty years and more ago,” Xavier continued. “While she was there she remembers that one night a man named Brayton Starmon brought three blond baby boys to Sedra’s home and left them there. In the days that followed people came to take the children. Money changed hands.”
The meaningless smile evaporated.
“Charlotte didn’t remember much, but she told us that she believed the children were wrapped in blue-and-brown-checkered blankets.”
“We got a deal on those covers,” Clay said. “Rose bought them from the main distributor in Tarzana.”
“Our church researcher found out that twenty-three years ago you had three babies kidnapped from a nursery you ran out of your home.”
“God knows we didn’t need the money,” the old man said to the flowering vine. “I was a machinist at McDonnell Douglas and made more than enough. But Rose just wanted something to do. She loved children. She loved Benol, but that child was a bad seed, bad seed.”
“Do you think that those babies Charlotte saw were the ones stolen from your house?” Xavier asked.
“Why haven’t you gone to the police, Mr. Johns?” The dreamy distance of his bearing was suddenly gone.
“We didn’t have any kind of corroboration, Mr. Berber. It was just a young woman talking about a child’s spotty memory. But now that you have identified those blankets we can go to the police. We can get them to track down this Sedra Landcombe.”
Clay was trembling in his chair.
“It’s getting cold out here,” he said, shocked not by the weather but by memories he’d rather have gone undisturbed.
“Is your wife still alive, sir?”
“What?”
“Your wife. Is she still alive?”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“She’s alive,” he said, as if the state were somehow conditional.
“May I speak with her?”
“Speak? To Rose?”
“Yes. I’d like to know if she remembers anything else.”
“It was my fault, Mr. Johns. I brought Benol into this house. She was the one kidnapped those boys. My younger brother married her mother when Bennie was only two. As soon as his lust was satisfied Edward left Benol’s mother. When his ex-wife died my brother was already a drunk. I took the girl in when the foster care services of Miami reached out to me. Worst mistake I ever made in my life. It was my fault that those children were stolen. Mine alone.”
“I’m a Christian,” Xavier said—it wasn’t really a lie. “I cast no stones or blame. I merely want to be of service.”
“You want to talk to Rose?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“You won’t get anything out of her.”
“I won’t lose anything either.”
Clay Berber smiled with real humor. The phrase, or maybe its simple structure, reminded him of a happier time.
“Well … help me up then.”
The house was open and barren. The first room they passed through contained only a gold-colored stuffed chair against a scarred wall that was sheathed in dulled, peeling wallpaper. The next room was larger, with no rugs on the dusty oak floor and a sofa sitting in the middle of the otherwise vacant space. The faint smell of garbage wafted through a doorway that probably led to the kitchen.
In the middle of the back wall of the living room was a black door that opened onto the shaggy overgrown yard.
The grounds behind the Berber home seemed to Rule like the edge of some vast wilderness. A giant blue pine loomed over the house and front portion of the backyard. Tall grasses moved in the afternoon breeze, seeming to have almost animal mobility. Tropical-looking flowers with purple petals and triplet yellow stamens hung from a vine from which also depended the occasional egg-shaped golden fruit. These vines served as covering for the high redwood fencing. Unkempt, man-size bushes and overgrown weeds vied for space among the outer shadows of the tree. Down a path of white stone disks Clay led Xavier through this wasteland and to the other side, where a weeping willow sat behind a self-generated curtain of light green leaves.
There came the faint sound of a human voice from behind the blind of branches and tiny, razorlike leaves. It was the sound of continual meaningless mumbling. This voice was hoarse from overuse. Maybe a woman.
Clay stopped at the swaying barrier. He brought his left hand to his chin.
Xavier waited for the old man to build up courage. He was in no rush.
Finally Berber brought his hands together like a swimmer or a praying penitent and parted the hanging branches. Xavier followed him through, into shadows.
The soil underneath the willow was barren for lack of sunlight. It was cooler under there, and empty except for an old stocky white woman in an ankle-long colorless bag of a dress sitting on a wooden crate and talking, talking, talking.
“Ooo de bal into seem it been,” she said grinning happily. “Popo tom is far long at ti ti remo pie.”
She sat spread-legged on the low fruit crate talking and gesticulating, living in a world removed.
“She sleeps on the couch in the living room and comes out here every morning,” Clay said. “I bring her water and tuna fish sandwiches, sometimes tomato soup.”
Xavier noticed the water bottle standing beside the wooden seat. Next to that was a large leather purse with big looping handles.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Berber,” the highly specialized deacon said. “How are you today?”
The woman stopped babbling and seemed to notice the men for the first time.
“Hello?” she asked.
“Yes,” Xavier replied, “hello.”
She grinned broadly, showing her few remaining stumpy yellow teeth.
“Ooo ti do my.”
“He came to ask about those boys,” Clay Berber said. “The ones that Benol kidnapped.”
The snarl that came into Rose Berber’s face caused a physical reaction in Xavier, just as if he had encountered a feral beast in the backyard jungle. It was then that he noticed the odor of urine mixed in with the stronger scents of plant and soil.
Rose made her interpretation of a muffled roar and stood up.
Clay took a step backward.
“Why don’t you let me talk to Mrs. Berber alone for a moment?” Xavier said to the hapless husband.
“You heard her,” the old man answered. “She can’t talk at all.”
“Sometimes the words aren’t in the m
outh and ear,” Xavier said, quoting from one of Father Frank’s sermons. “Sometimes hearts and minds communicate.”
Xavier hadn’t known exactly what Frank meant until meeting Rose Berber. But Clay understood immediately.
“I’ll just be a few feet away,” Clay said to his wife and their visitor.
When he passed through the wall of willow leaves Rose sat down on her crate again.
Xavier approached her and she looked up at him—her eyes filled with wonder. There was no fear there at all.
“Ooo ti.”
Xavier crouched down, bringing his head a few inches below hers and about a foot away. She took in a breath of anticipation and held it for a moment or two. When she exhaled the stagnant gust broke across Xavier’s face, but he didn’t flinch or move away. He’d been in New York’s filthiest back alleys and in the company of dead bodies and their gases. He’d smelled the rot of crack dens and heroin addicts’ beds. He’d breathed in the blood of his enemies.
“Can I look in your bag, Rose?”
“Abara abba.”
“No,” he said patiently, “in your bag.”
He gestured toward the openmouthed leather sack with its big arching handles. It had once been brown but had faded and whitened until it was mouse colored, tawny, and cracked.
“Hello?” Rose Berber said.
“Bag?”
“Ooo la la?”
“Oui oui.”
Rose grinned at some faint memory of language. Xavier touched the nearest handle of her bag and she froze. He touched her hardened, weathered hand and she grabbed his thumb with the strength of a powerful infant.
Using his free hand Xavier reached into the bag, grabbed onto the papers inside, and secreted them under his jacket. All of this was driven by intuition. He felt the old woman’s secrets, smelled them on her dress and in the dirt around her crate.
He stood up quickly, pulling his thumb from her grasp.
“Osh barning, barning,” she lamented, and Xavier wondered if maybe there was some kind of sublime meaning to her nonsense.
He didn’t ponder this riddle but walked out of the tree room into the wilderness yard where Clay Berber waited.
“I told you she couldn’t talk,” the old man said.
“She does nothing but talk, brother. What you meant to say is that we don’t understand.”
While walking down the front pathway from the Berber residence, Xavier felt like he used to when leaving the scene of a crime he’d just committed; furtive and vulnerable, angry and even a little bit giddy.
Clay was standing on the topmost white step of his home, watching as Xavier unlocked the door of the Fleetwood.
At that moment a tortured scream came from behind the house. Clay turned and, hobbling in the pantomime of a run, headed through the front door. Xavier slid behind the steering wheel, turned the key, and drove off before his crime could be discovered and avenged.
On the rooftop parking lot three blocks from his Flower Street apartment, Xavier brought out the thick tattered sheaf of papers he stole from the wilderness woman and her sad, fading husband. There were newspaper and magazine articles about the kidnappings. There was a picture of Benol at the age of twelve or thirteen that looked something like her—but not enough for an ID. There was a letter from a police detective, Simon Lowe, stating that, though the investigation would never be closed, the police had come to a dead end in finding their niece or the babies she’d taken.
Xavier sifted through the articles, reading a bit of one and then passing on to another. He already knew the names of the children’s parents; Benol’s document had provided all that. He thought that he knew more than anything Rose Berber could have collected until a postcard dropped from the stack onto the seat next to him.
There was an alligator attacking a blue heron on the photo face. The bird was just rising up from a lake, its whitish blue-gray wings struggling against the air. The alligator had clamped onto its left claw, however, and was pulling the beautiful bird down into murky green darkness.
On the other side of the card the postal stamp said Tampa, Florida, and was dated February 9, 1993—five years after the kidnappings.
C, I need some money. Not too much. Just enough to pay rent and groceries for two months. $856. B
The card was most probably addressed to Clay Berber but what was the threat? Benol had moved to Florida; she admitted that herself. “B” had signed the postcard.
Xavier walked the long way ’round to his apartment building, considering what the postcard meant. The papers felt hot in his hand and so when he passed the neighborhood post office he went in and sent an express mail package, containing the papers he stole, to Father Frank and Sister Hope. He sent everything but the postcard.
That done, he headed for his building, thinking that this would be a nice evening for peppermint schnapps and Charles Dickens.
He took the stairs two at a time while recalling the old days, when he was often going up or down the back way to keep out of sight from the cops. Technically he was still on the run, but he didn’t see his life like that anymore. Now he was a new man in a new life, far removed, invisible, and free—to serve.
He stopped at his own door, a sixth or maybe seventh sense warning him of something, something.
But Ecks was not the kind of criminal who was controlled by fear. He felt the pangs of terror, lived under the reign of threat, but he only ever took a step backward so that he could attack from a better position; that fact, as his alcoholic father often said, was both his creed and his breed.
So when he opened the door and saw the big man sitting at his yellow table, he felt mild surprise but not fear. The men in suits flanking the inside of his front door were no revelation either. He didn’t back up because he could hear the footsteps behind him in the hallway.
Xavier walked into the center of the small room and stared.
“Mr. Noland?” the seated man, who was obviously in charge, asked. He had an accent: French, not French Canadian.
Xavier had never met a French cop before.
“And you are?”
“Detective Andre Tourneau.” He wore a darkish tan trench coat with buttoned flaps on the shoulders and a sash hanging down to the floor. He was a big man but not necessarily fat. Ecks wondered at the violence that might reside behind his small green eyes.
“Cops?” Xavier asked, moving his head to take in all of his company.
“Have a seat, Mr. Noland,” Tourneau offered. It was almost as if the apartment were Tourneau’s office and Xavier was the unwilling guest.
Ecks lowered himself onto one of his hardwood chairs and leaned back onto the two back legs. A glance out the window told him that his Edsel had been returned, parked as it was behind his newspaper delivery truck.
Xavier then peered at his surprise visitor. He would have called himself a white man, though his skin was light olive. His hair was like a weathered brown roof atop a country cottage. Tourneau was in his fifties but exuded the vitality of an animal in the wild. Either he had good genes or he paid close attention to his physical health.
“Do you know why I’m here?” Tourneau asked.
“To give me a citizenship award of some kind?”
“You were seen running—staggering, actually—from a home in Culver City yesterday. The next day that domicile was found to be a crime scene.”
“Oh? And who is the criminal?”
Tourneau smiled.
Xavier took a look at the four standing cops who were now crowding his small studio. They were all suited, tall, and of almost every race the city had to offer.
The Rainbow Squad, Ecks thought, and then he smiled at the phrase.
“Something funny?” Tourneau asked.
“No,” Ecks said to the cop. “I went to Mrs. Landcombe’s house to ask her about a friend of mine, an Albert Timmerman, who lived in Seaside. Albert knew her in his younger days. When he was dying he asked me to tell her about his passing. All he remembered was her firs
t name and the corner where her house was. I went there and she offered me a drink. The next thing I knew the room was spinning and someone tried to hit me with a baseball bat. I ran out the door, down a long street, and smack-dab into a moving car.”
“Did Timmerman die?”
“Yes. Heart attack. He’s buried in the graveyard in Seaside. That’s a little town just north of Seabreeze City.”
The detective stared for a moment, two. He was digesting the information, moving it around behind his beady eyes like puzzle pieces that had multiple resolutions—but only one true answer.
“Why didn’t you give this information to Captain Soto?” Tourneau asked.
“At first I didn’t remember. I didn’t know anything when I woke up in that hospital bed. Not a damn thing. The blow to the head added to whatever drugs they gave me. It’s only been coming back in snatches.”
“Maybe you decided to go back to Mrs. Landcombe’s home and confront her,” Tourneau offered.
“Look, man,” Ecks said with an edge to his voice. “I’m not gonna argue with you or suppose this or that. I didn’t go back to that house or commit any kinda crime. You wanna arrest me and take me to jail … okay, I’ll go. I’m not gonna fight you either.”
“That’s a good decision,” Tourneau said, and Ecks realized that he was facing someone who was very much like him—violent and proud.
Xavier held out his hands, palms up and steady, saying, “Handcuffs?”
He stared into the detective’s green beads, letting him know that in a dark alley, with no one else around, the fight would be on.
“How did a high-ranking captain like Soto get your case?” the displaced Frenchman asked.
“Say what?” Xavier put his dark hands on the bright yellow table, palms down.
“You understand.”
“I understand the question, but I have no idea what happened after that car hit me. I woke up and your brother in blue was standin’ over me. I sure in hell didn’t call him, and I have no idea how the LAPD dispatches its police.”
“Why did Landcombe try to kill you?”
“I don’t know that she did. Maybe she just wanted to knock me out.”
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