California Girl

by T. Jefferson Parker

“Tight,” said Jonas. “Becker?”

  Andy sat up and tried to bring some force to his voice.

  “A tough new city ordinance that jitterbugged into law last month will bounce the monkey, twist, frug, and mashed potato right off three Laguna nightclub stages.”

  “Wordy,” said Jonas.

  “I think it’s bright and amusing,” said Teresa.

  Huntington liked it; Newport didn’t.

  Andy stared at Chas.

  “Tie goes to the runner,” said Jonas. “We’re done. Becker, stay here. I want to talk to you.”

  When the others had filed out Jonas told Andy to close the door to the editorial conference room. Then he told him to sit down.

  “You know what Nick did and his partner did to my forehead,” said Dessinger.

  Andy nodded but said nothing.

  “I won’t forgive or forget that,” said Jonas. “Ever.”

  “I wouldn’t, either.”

  “Bet you two had a laugh over it, though. Didn’t you?”

  Andy nodded again. “But I’m not writing a Journal editorial humiliating my brother.”

  Jonas’s smiling gaze went right through him. “I thought about Nick. I made some inquiries. Made some more. Got what I needed. It wasn’t hard.”

  Andy saw it coming. Tried to look anticipatory and clueless.

  “A lonely district attorney receptionist. A widow. Pretty eyes.”

  “You lost me.”

  “This will bring you back. Sharon Santos. You carried little friendly greetings back and forth between them in the beginning, remember? He’s giving her more than greetings now. I’ve got witnesses at her apartment complex. I’ve got a statement she signed for my promise to keep it out of my paper.”

  “Which you’ll happily break.”

  “I don’t have to break it. I’ve got a better audience than the public.”

  Then the sudden awareness of disaster, the first stomach-dropping loss of altitude. “You’ll just dump it all on Katy Becker.”

  “Now you understand why you have to write the op-ed piece.”

  Andy stood and Dessinger flinched. Then stood, too. He pulled his cuffs right.

  “What do you want?” asked Andy. “You want him off the case? Fired?”

  Dessinger looked at Andy in what appeared to be genuine astonishment. “I want him ruined.”

  “You’re not ruined. No one even knows. Nick did something stupid and felt bad. Forget about it.”

  “I can’t.”

  Dessinger backed away from Andy, toward the door. “You probably haven’t noticed this because you’re sleeping with my hot little cousin, but there hasn’t been a Dessinger born on earth who possesses one grain of forgiveness in his heart. Or hers.”

  “Be the first,” said Andy. “Start a fad.”

  “Have some fun with that editorial.”

  “Look, Jonas, if you drop your bomb on Katy, Nick’s going to drop you back on the Times and the Register. They’d love to know you were sleeping with Janelle Vonn.”

  Dessinger frowned and shook his head. “They’ve known it for months. I went out of my way to show her off. She was an absolute trophy, in every way. I can take that heat. I can use it to my advantage. I’m the single guy who dated the beauty queen that got her head sawed off. That makes me interesting. Nick has three children and a loyal wife and a widow girlfriend from work. That makes him rotten to the core.”

  Andy considered his options. One came to mind. “Not many people can make the hair stand up on the back of my neck like you can.”

  Jonas cocked his head. “That makes me proud. Let me know if you want some guidance on the article or the op-ed piece. And don’t even think of going easy on Detective Becker.”

  “What if I write a resignation letter instead?”

  “I’ll make someone else do them. And I’ll get in touch with fat Katy. Your name on the articles is the only thing that’s keeping me from doing that.”

  TWO HOURS later Andy had written both pieces. He had never written lies before and the words sat oddly on the paper. It left him tired, like the ribbon ink was blood that had come out of his body.

  He put the originals and two sets of carbons in his briefcase, locked it, and headed out for Millie’s.

  Nick read them in the poor light of a red vinyl booth. He finished, rubbed his chin. “It’s these or Katy?”

  Andy nodded.

  “Oh man,” whispered Nick.

  ANDY PLACED the original articles in Jonas Dessinger’s in-basket just after six that evening. Carbon number one went to his editor, Teresa. Carbon number two went into his top desk drawer.

  Jonas called at 6:10 to say he loved the pieces. He wanted to substitute the words “bogged-down” and “overmatched” for “lengthy” and “less experienced.”

  Andy told him to take it up with Teresa.

  Teresa called at 6:15 to say she couldn’t believe her overbred cousin was putting him through this. She demanded to know what the cause of all this animosity was, but Andy wouldn’t say. She thought “overmatched” was speculative and untrue.

  “Listen to what you wrote,” she said. “‘After two agonizing weeks, we at the Journal have begun to wonder if the evidence that has stumped the rookie detective might be better evaluated by a more seasoned investigator.’”

  “Orders from your overbred cousin.”

  “I can bad-mouth my family. You can’t.”

  “I have to bad-mouth my own.”

  “Andy, what’s going on?”

  “Talk to the associate publisher. He’s the psychopath fashion model on the third floor.”

  “I’m going to.”

  Andy called Verna and got a home number for Sharon Santos. It cost him drinks and maybe dinner. Sharon confirmed that she’d talked to a man identifying himself as Jonas Dessinger of the Orange County Journal. She had signed a “kill statement” about her liaison with Nick Becker in order to prevent a story about it in the paper. She allowed that her neighbors had probably seen Nick more than once, and “could possibly have heard some things.” Nick had helped this one neighbor jump her car, so she’d remember him, no problem. Sure, Nick knew all this. But Sharon was on his side all the way. She loved him and didn’t want to ruin his marriage.

  “Andy,” said Sharon, “I’d kill myself before I’d hurt Nick.”

  A chill shivered up Andy’s back. “Avoid both,” he said.

  “All right.”

  He left the building through the display advertising department back door. Couldn’t face Teresa, whom he loved, or Jonas, whom he hated. Or the owlish copy editors or surly night-beat photogs.

  Andy gunned his ice blue Corvair down Newport toward Coast Highway. Police band radio loud as always, top down, and the air cold on his face. Lynette’s address in his reporter’s notepad on the seat beside him.

  He couldn’t believe Jonas could make him screw over Nick like this. Make him screw himself over. Like a bad dream. All he ever wanted to do was write a decent book someday and stick by the people he loved. Not accomplishing either of those, he thought. Writing lies to hurt Nick was all he was doing. Either do that, or destroy Nick and Katy. He had the idea of getting Jonas off somewhere quiet to talk to him, maybe Jonas would get rational. Like maybe the end of the Newport Pier, and when they were done talking Andy could push him off.

  21

  LYNETTE VONN LIVED up in Huntington Beach. She let Andy in without a smile. Straight black hair, early twenties, thin. Bell-bottoms made her look thinner. Barefoot. Yellow halter top with a work shirt over it. Big eyes. Andy saw in her none of her sister Janelle’s casual radiance.

  Lynette made them coffee and they sat in the den. Green shag carpet, a TV with rabbit ears, and a Magnavox hi-fi on a rolling stand with clear wheels. Andy smelled marijuana and incense. The house was a small craftsman cottage with a chain-link fence around the backyard and an oil pumper beyond the fence. Through the den window the pumper looked like a monstrous steel grasshopper gnawing away. The
night was cool and the windows were open. Andy smelled ocean and crude oil. The neighbors had the radio on, “Sunshine of Your Love” riding in with the smells.

  Lynette told him she had left the Tustin home when she was fourteen. Run off with one of her brother Lenny’s friends, Preach. Preach was twenty-five, drove a chopped black Harley with the words God’s Outlaw painted on the tank in white. He could cook crank you wouldn’t believe, clear as glass, keep you high for days and a tolerable crash. Taught other Hessians how to do it. Preach also had a religious streak, carried around a bag of rattlesnakes tied to the top of the sissy bar of his hog, and that bag would swing up against her back if they slowed down fast, a creepy feeling but she never got bit. Preach had devised this kind of religious service for Sunday mornings where you’d listen to him sermonize and take the snakes out of the bag and wave ’em around, but Preach had sewn their mouths shut with a big needle and dental floss and when they started starving he’d toss them out and get new ones. Which was easy when you’re riding your Harley all around the desert giving lessons on crank production. But Preach had the other Hessians freaked out with those snakes and his own weird eyes—dark brown with blue around the edges. It was all rough sex, drugs, and fights until she ran out on him in Colusa, picked up a bus down to San Francisco, and moved in with a musician/heroin dealer. That lasted a year, coldest of her life, couldn’t ever thaw out in that town.

  “Wow,” said Andy.

  Lynette shook her head and sighed. “Pure crazy. I hitchhiked down here last year. Liked it and stayed. Had some money saved. I’m waitressing over at the Bear. I can’t get you in free but I can get you good seats once you pay your way in.”

  Andy had been to the Golden Bear a lot. Seen the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul & Mary, and Pete Seeger and Dylan and all the folkies, but now they were doing almost all rock and roll, thank God.

  “Did you and Janelle stay in touch?”

  “It turned out that she wrote me a lot of letters but didn’t know where to mail them. I pretty much dropped out. When I got this place and got clean I called her and she came over. Brought the letters in a box. It was kinda funny seeing her for the first time in six years. My sister was two years younger than me and we weren’t very much alike.”

  Andy looked at Lynette. My sister, he thought. “Maybe you were more alike than you think.”

  Lynette stared at Andy with her big brown eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, you both had a talent for what most people would consider trouble.”

  “No question it was trouble.”

  “The same kind of hunger for something,” said Andy. “But for what? To get to something better?”

  “Just to get away, I think. Did you know her well?”

  “No, not really. I admired her, though. Something about her.”

  “She was pretty,” said Lynette.

  “But more than pretty. Remember the guitar and tutu?”

  “That tutu was mine.”

  Andy looked out the window to the big oil pumper. It chomped away at the ground, drawing up the crude. He thought of Lynette throwing the rocks at them after the rumble by the packinghouse. And Janelle with the oranges she didn’t throw. And Janelle on the porch of the Holt Avenue house, shaking her curls and rasping out that song. And Janelle coming out of the White House nightclub in Laguna that night. With Jesse Black and the surf movie guy and Cory Bonnett the leather store owner. The way the streetlight cast her face in the fog. I’m so sorry what happened to Clay. Call me sometime.

  For the millionth time in his life, Andy’s inner boot kicked his heart, hard, for never calling Janelle Vonn.

  “Tough to explain,” he said.

  “I’ll get the letters.”

  When Lynette came back into the room she had a cardboard box half full of letter envelopes. She tilted it so Andy could see. A hundred, he guessed. She set it on the floor at her feet and sat back down.

  “You should have told Nick about these,” he said.

  “I don’t dig pigs.”

  “Nick’s not a pig. He helped Janelle way back when the trouble started.”

  She stared at him. Andy felt sized up. “I’m showing them to you,” she said. “If there’s something important, you tell him.”

  Andy watched the oil pumper for a second. Heard the far-off hiss of cars out on Coast Highway. Then Hendrix on the radio.

  “I never wrote back to my sister,” she said. She looked down at the box. Guided a strand of lank black hair behind her ear. “Maybe that’s why she wrote so much. It was kind of like she wrote and told me things because she knew I wouldn’t judge. Like she was writing only for herself. But I did love her. She knew that, before the end.”

  “When did she write the first one?”

  “Early sixty-one. After Mom killed herself and I hooked up with Preach. She—my sister—was eleven. She knew what I’d done. Said in the letter she wanted us to come get her.”

  My sister.

  “Her brothers were molesting her by then.”

  “Just starting. They’d done it to me, too. That was one of the reasons I split.”

  “You were afraid to tell?”

  Lynette turned her face from Andy. Looked out at the oil pump or the moon. “Lenny’d hit you. Then Dad would hit Lenny. A week later, the same thing all over again with Casey. It was scary. You blocked it out. Ethan was okay.”

  Andy moved and sat on the couch with Lynette. He looked down into the box and picked up an envelope.

  “That’s an old one,” said Lynette. “From her birthday in sixty-two.”

  It was pale green and square. Andy ran his finger over the four-cent stamp with a rose on it. Lynette’s name on the front but no address. He worked out a greeting card with a picture of a misty forest and the words Love Speaks in Moments of Silence.

  He read out loud:

  June 1, 1962

  Dear Lynette,

  Hey, sister, I turned thirteen today and graduate from seventh grade in two weeks! I’m still popular. I asked for makeup and a horse but don’t think I’ll get either. Dad still doesn’t work much. Everything is crummy but the new Elvis album is really good. Over a year since you’ve been gone and I haven’t got a note or phone call from you. That doesn’t matter as long as you’re okay. I love you anyway and I can visit you in my brain anytime I want!

  Love,

  J.

  “My sister was optimistic then,” said Lynette.

  Andy put the card in the envelope and the envelope back in the box. “Can I see a more recent one?”

  Lynette leaned forward. Held her hair back with one hand and worked the other through the letters. She handed him a white legal-size envelope. It had Lynette’s name and a five-cent stamp with Madonna and child, but that was all.

  “Did she always put a stamp on?” asked Andy.

  “Every one. For six years,” she said quietly. “And always wrote the day’s date, even though she never mailed one. Eighty-six letters and cards. She spent three dollars and ninety-eight cents on postage. Imagine what that would cost today.”

  Andy nodded and looked into Lynette Vonn’s earnest brown eyes.

  He opened the letter, which was handwritten in black ink on a standard sheet of typing paper, and read out loud again:

  August 11, 1967

  Dear Sis,

  They’re taking my Miss Tustin title away because I got a cover on Playboy! Can you believe that? I showed less skin to Playboy than I did in the swimsuit competition! What hypocrites. Screw them. I’ve had enough.

  I’m leaving Tustin. Think I’ll go to Laguna Beach where it’s beautiful and I don’t know hardly anyone. I’ve got some financial backing and the Beetle from Roger to get me started. Maybe do more modeling because it pays well but you have to drive to L.A. and wait around for hours. Pretty much kicked the drugs and alky-hol but still like a little tequila now and then. You sip it, you don’t slam it with lime and salt like those dumb college boys. Everybody’s talking about
LSD, how it makes you see things in a different way. They also say it’s really strong. There’s this guy in Laguna, Timothy Leary, and they say if you can experience LSD with him he’ll get you into the right groove.

  Jesse got an early tape of some new Hendrix music and duped one for me. There’s this song called “Little Wing” that speaks right into my heart. Really pretty words and guitar and Jimi’s got a good voice. No Elvis, but you know what I mean. The guitar solo will totally blow your mind. $2.99 is a lot to pay for an album but it’s worth the extra fifty cents for stereo instead of monaural. ’Course, you can’t play a record when you’re riding on the back of a hog!

  I always think about you. You’re like a myth to me now, this sister I had until she disappeared five lives ago. I mean years. I been through a lot and you’ve probably got some stories, too. Dad’s pathetic but the boys are long gone so that’s good. When I think of all the shit they put us through I’m surprised we didn’t just shoot them one night in their sleep. Woulda been doing them a favor, not to mention us.

  Anyway, I love you in my mind,

  J.

  “Roger Stoltz, the congressman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I knew he helped her out when I wrote that article,” said Andy, “but I didn’t know he gave her money and a car.”

  Lynette nodded. “In one of the letters she said he went nuts for her.”

  “Nuts for her,” said Andy. Felt a tingle in his fingertips.

  “I can find the letter pretty easy.”

  “Do that.”

  Andy watched Lynette take a handful of envelopes, fan through them and then set them aside. She stopped midway through the second batch and handed him another legal-size white envelope.

  “You’ve read them a lot,” he said.

  “I didn’t get them till late last year. Had some catching up to do. I can tell by the envelopes what’s inside. The way she wrote my name, the kind of ink, the kind of envelope and stamp.”