Veteran Avenue

by Mark Pepper

‘No, we just drove around the mountain.’

  The forest swallowed them in shadow. Further on, John could see the group of cabins where he had first run into Chuck. Vincent overtook his wife and son and blocked their path, forcing them to stop.

  ‘You drove around? For a fucking hour?’

  ‘Don’t swear at him!’ Gwen said, glowering. She side-stepped, barged past and carried on running.

  John was glad of his mother’s defense and fleet footwork; he was a terrible liar when pinned by a disbelieving stare. His father fell in behind them again, panting hard as he caught up. They ran past the cabins and out into the sunshine of the ghost town. To John, it felt as though he had been gone for years, as though a lifetime had passed since Chuck had enticed him away.

  They raced in silence across the clearing. Ten yards from the car, Vincent tripped and went his length – a whump and an ‘Oof!’ behind them – but Gwen never broke her stride and John was not allowed to. She jumped onto the back seat with him, curling an arm around his shoulders. John could smell her perfume, pungently reactivated by her sweat. She bellowed unsympathetically at her husband to pick himself up. Grimacing, Vincent gained his feet and limped towards them covered in dust. He reached the car, chucked the tire iron on the passenger seat and set his right foot on the sill to inspect the worst of his injuries. A pale globule enlarged on his knee until the meniscus broke, releasing a dark stream down his leg.

  ‘Vinny! Get in the bloody car!’

  ‘Keys!’ he said, slipping in behind the wheel. ‘Shit, where are the keys?’

  Gwen cursed under her breath, let go of John and leaned forward between the seats – better to scream at her fool husband.

  ‘You were driving! You had them! Find them!’

  ‘Shit!’ Vincent rubbed his palms over his pockets but they were flat and empty.

  Had his parents been quiet for just two seconds, John could have told them not to panic – Chuck was long gone. But they continued ranting at each other so he sought another way to help. His perfect eyesight scanned the earth where his father had fallen and spotted the circular red fob the rental company had attached to the keys. He decided it would save time if he simply retrieved them himself. His mother made a grab for him, missed and squeaked in horror. As she became instantly hysterical, Vincent gave his lungs another good workout. Clearly, their son was fleeing back to his abductor, their weird affinity too strong to break.

  John stopped running, although not in response to his parents. He bent and snatched the keys off the ground and turned to jangle them aloft.

  But it was not this that silenced their protestations.

  A noise: a single crack, carried to them from the distance on the telegraphical mountain air.

  The gunshot lingered in John’s ears long after its brief resonance had truly vanished. It had not sounded like the guns he heard on Starsky and Hutch every week. When they went off, they were bigger, fuller, more significant – explosions more than cracks. Before that day, he had never heard the real thing; nevertheless he knew it had just happened. A petty noise, belying its effect. And he knew in his heart what it meant for his friend with the V8 pick-up.

  He felt the presence of his parents a couple of paces to his rear, having vaguely heard them climb from the car and wander over, their argument abruptly spent.

  ‘Son ...?’ his father said in a whisper.

  John realized by his absence of shock that this moment had been inevitable. He didn’t feel like crying. He had shed his tears in the truck, hearing the life ebb from Chuck’s voice, a precursor to the bodily death that had been marked by the gunshot. Some place deep inside him seemed to understand all this; a level he couldn’t contact, but which spoke to him in the language of intuition, unaffected by age or experience.

  ‘It’s okay, Dad. You don’t have to call the police now.’

  It had been twenty-two years since John Frears had seen Donnie Chester. During that period both men had barely kept in contact, often going two or three years without saying hello, but they had never lost touch and both had made repeated promises to visit. If John couldn’t get to Los Angeles, Donnie would fly to London. However it happened, one day they would find a little time and get together.

  Now that time had finally arrived, it was John who had crossed the Atlantic and he still couldn’t see Donnie because Donnie had been buried in a closed casket.

  The cemetery was small and quietly idyllic; Beverly Glen in the eastern reaches of the Santa Monica Mountains between Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.

  The service at an end, Donnie’s father grabbed a handful of dirt and chucked it in the hole. It spattered on the lid of the lowered metal casket. He stepped back and wiped one gritty palm roughly against the other. His face was unreadable, but that indelicate movement of his hands betrayed an emotion more complex than mere grief. His duty done, he broke from the circle of mourners and marched off towards the cemetery road.

  John watched Dodge Chester go, and understood his impatience to be away. The turnout had been poor, the whole occasion a sham. Those who had shown up had seemed more embarrassed than upset. The circumstances of Donnie’s death had evidently caused more distress than his actual passing. The email John had received from Donnie’s sister had frankly explained the situation. Virginia had sent the same message to every name in her brother’s address book, with the rider that she did not expect a favorable response. Had John not been at such a loose end, his would have been another polite refusal.

  Wearing dark glasses to mask her pain, Virginia took a handful of earth off the mound and dropped it in the grave. Behind his own shades, John watched her intently. She was deeply beautiful, mixed race. She turned and began slowly towards the cars, and, after adding their own dirt to the lid, the other mourners followed suit.

  All except John. He loosened his black tie to let a bit of air down his collar – December and the mercury was touching seventy – and, staring into the darkness at the silver box, his thoughts became memories.

  The minister, still standing at the head of the grave, instantly brought him back to the present.

  ‘Terrible business,’ he said dourly.

  John glanced up but let the facile observation remain rhetorical.

  ‘Have you come far?’ the minister asked.

  ‘London.’

  ‘Really? Long way. You must have been very close.’

  ‘I hardly knew the guy.’

  The minister frowned.

  ‘Nice service,’ John said, dropped some dirt in the hole and returned to his rental car.

  A few miles away in Westwood, Hayley Roth parked her old white Beetle Karmann convertible on Veteran Avenue and stepped into the Los Angeles National Cemetery. It was the antithesis of the one in Beverly Glen: a hundred and fourteen acres; traffic hum twenty-four hours a day, courtesy of the Interstate 405, the San Diego Freeway, which delineated the cemetery’s western perimeter.

  She stopped and scanned the depressing vista. The northern half of the cemetery contained upright markers, meticulously-aligned white tablets. The southern half, beyond the trees and the central columbarium, contained the ground-flush markers. Beyond those, Sepulveda Boulevard and the 405, was the Veterans Administration Medical Center.

  Hayley started walking, the stem of a single white rose pinched between thumb and forefinger. Years of tracing the same route through the headstones allowed her to find the one she wanted without searching. At its base, the petals of her last token of remembrance had turned brown and crispy. Beside it was a large spray of fading red roses, a sign that her mother had recently been there. Hayley wished they could have knelt together, but theirs was not the happiest of relationships.

  She lowered herself and placed her rose, then turned her eyes to the sky. The vast blue was marred only by the crossing contrails of two high-altitude airliners, and Hayley smiled faintly. It looked like a crucifix, a sign from her father that he was listening. She had always believed only the bones were beneath ground
. What mattered, the spirit, was free somewhere far above.

  ‘Lot to tell you today, Dad. Some bad, some good. Bad first …’

  This one-way chat was a monthly ritual. Her husband Larry saw it as an obsession but she didn’t care. It refreshed her soul. She could offload her anxieties, share her hopes, speak her deepest thoughts out loud. It was cheaper than the shrink – just the gas to get there.

  Absently pulling blades of grass from the turf, Hayley rambled on for several minutes. She was worried about Larry. His work partner had recently keeled over from a fatal coronary, which had set him soul-searching. At forty-two years old, Larry’s mid-life crisis had pounced and Hayley was bearing the brunt. He wasn’t violent, but she could sense something nasty threatening, like thunderheads on the horizon.

  She was quiet after that. By admitting her fears they had somehow been validated. Now, she was more concerned than ever. When she passed on her good news it didn’t greatly lift her mood.

  ‘I’m through to the second interview for Malibu Mischief. This afternoon. It’s a soap. Daytime, but Amanda says viewing figures are good and it might find an evening slot soon. I’m being seen for a main character. It could be the break I’ve been waiting for.’ She rolled some blades of grass gently between her fingertips and thought back to her graduation from UCLA. ‘Twenty-three years. My God … that’s an eternity when you want something so badly.’ She managed a wan smile, slightly ashamed. ‘Dad, if you could get someone up there to pull a few strings ...’

  There didn’t seem much more to say. She knelt in silence for a few minutes, her thoughts diffuse but shot through with apprehension. Her marriage was her whole life, and what if it really was beginning to fall apart? Where would she find a meaning to her existence? Her acting career was going nowhere, never had done. Except on these rare interview days, it was hardly more than a figment of her imagination.

  She closed her eyes and whispered to the heavens.

  ‘I love you, Dad. Please help me today.’

  She collected the month-old rose, stood up and set off back to her car. Along the way she dropped the brittle bloom in a trash can full of them.

  Seated again in the Beetle, she checked her reflection in the rear-view mirror. In accordance with the casting director’s advice, she had applied make-up sparingly and had pulled her long russet curls back through an elasticized cinch into a pony tail. Her face looked fine, but the decorative ribbon over the cinch had worked a little loose so she bowed it again. This was the first time she had worn it to an interview, although she had several the same, all cut from a favorite childhood dress. Perhaps it would bring her luck.

  Food and drink awaited the mourners at the Chester residence. Having formed part of the cortège to the church, John easily remembered the short route back. He drove his rented Chrysler through salubrious Beverly Glen, past detached homes and luxury cars.

  When he arrived outside the house on Angelo Drive, Virginia was on the sidewalk looking agitated. He parked and got out.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked, removing his sunglasses.

  She stopped checking up and down the road. ‘Uh, you’re ...’

  ‘John.’

  ‘John, yes. No, my father’s gone. We came back together in the limo, then he drove off in his Jeep. I should have listened; I knew he didn’t want anyone back here. It was me. I insisted we do this right.’

  ‘You only get one chance to say goodbye,’ John said, trying to reassure.

  ‘I know. I wish my father did.’

  ‘He will – given time.’

  Virginia was glancing up and down the road again, impatiently jangling a set of car keys in her hand.

  ‘You’ve no idea where he went?’ John asked.

  ‘I think I know exactly where he went, that’s the problem. The mood he’s in, he shouldn’t be anywhere near a gun.’

  John gently touched her forearm. ‘Hey, calm down. Explain. Where’s he gone?’

  She collected herself. ‘My father owns a gun range in the Valley.’

  ‘I see. I think Donnie mentioned it once. And are you worried about your father or other people?’

  ‘I’d just prefer he wasn’t around guns right now. He’s had problems for years. Ever since I was a kid. I’m scared this might push him over the edge.’

  ‘Problems … in what way?’

  ‘His was the generation that went to Vietnam.’

  ‘Oh. Enough said. Are you going to look for him?’

  ‘I have to.’

  Virginia pressed a transmitter on her key fob. In front of them, the indicators of a red Audi TT winked twice, and from under the hood a remarkably lifelike voice announced, ‘Dis-armed!’

  She slipped in behind the wheel, then debated for a moment before asking: ‘John, would you come with me? You might help.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You told me earlier you knew Donnie in the Persian Gulf. Maybe you can remind my dad of a time when he was proud of his son.’

  ‘This is Six Adam Nine at Tamarind. Code Four on that domestic.’ Officer Larry Roth released the button on his shoulder mike. No charges pressed, no arrest papers served. A peaceful conclusion, but his heart was hammering and his blood felt like pure adrenaline in his veins. He reckoned the job would kill him in the end. Nothing newsworthy like a terminal gun battle. Stress. Plain and simple. The residue of fear. In time it clogged the arteries as sure as a diet of bourbon and burgers. Each time the dispatcher called, the body responded, all systems to red alert. This could be the day someone starts shooting. Ninety-nine to one against, but it’s the thought that counts. The brain could stand down pretty quickly from combat-ready; not the body. The body stayed wired for hours. At the end of the shift, relaxation came out of a bottle or not at all, but it never flushed away the stress, which built and built and built until ...

  He stopped the silent strobing of lights on the roof of the black-and-white Dodge Charger, swung a U-turn in the street and cruised away.

  ‘Larry, can you believe that guy?’

  ‘If I wanted a conversation I’d start one.’

  The rookie was really beginning to irritate. Joey DeCecco wasn’t a kid, but he’d replaced an officer of thirty-five years’ experience. A month ago, Officer Frank Dista had suffered a massive heart attack in the station locker room. Nothing theatrical; he had made a startled face, seized his chest and dropped dead. Larry had watched it happen, had smelt the stench as Frank’s bowels let go, and the shock had been extraordinary. Twenty years policing the streets of Hollywood had shown Larry a lot of hurt, but nothing had struck home like this. A profound sense of futility had swamped him then, and he had been wading deeper every day since.

  He turned the car onto Sunset Boulevard. He could feel DeCecco’s eyes boring into him and guessed an apology was in order, but his guts were balled too tight. It was DeCecco who spoke.

  ‘Officer Roth, I’m sure you’ll tell me if I’m speaking out of turn, but why don’t you put in for some stress leave?’

  Larry clenched his teeth – a dam against a torrent of expletives. He pulled the Charger into the curb and turned to his new partner.

  ‘When you’ve been in the job more than five minutes, DeCecco, then I might listen to your opinion on my state of mind. Until then, keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.’

  DeCecco didn’t reply.

  ‘Good,’ Larry said. ‘Now you’re learning.’

  An awkward silence reigned for ten minutes. The tension in the vehicle was palpable. Larry knew he was perhaps treating DeCecco unfairly but he was too screwed up to make amends. Frank’s death had got him thinking. What was the point risking his life for these people? Was he really making a difference? Even the slightest? He didn’t think so. If he defused a domestic one day, it might go off fatally the next. His was a finger in the dyke when the hole was fist-sized.

  The dispatcher’s voice came over the radio.

  ‘Six Adam Nine, see the man at the corner of Van Ness and Lemon Grove.’<
br />
  Van Ness and Lemon Grove was at the south-east corner of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where it bordered the back-lots of Paramount Studios.

  Larry left the car on Van Ness and entered the cemetery via the Lemon Grove Gate. Eddie wanted to see him. Eddie always asked to meet at the same intersection, but he meant inside the cemetery, specifically behind the tomb of Douglas Fairbanks Senior. DeCecco obediently followed, asking no questions, and Larry kept several steps ahead as though he didn’t have a partner.

  Set in the Fairbanks Gardens at one end of a long rectangular pond, Douglas Fairbanks’ resting place was an ostentatious affair in white marble. The tomb itself was raised on a platform of three steps, and a three-sided pillared monument had been erected behind it, straight from a Roman B-movie, featuring Fairbanks’ profile inside a laurel wreath above his name and dates: 1883-1939. It was encircled to the rear by conifers and a low stone wall, and it was here that Eddie liked to meet – in the shadow of greatness. Unfortunately, his information didn’t always match his sense of the melodramatic.

  ‘Hey, Officer Roth,’ Eddie greeted him, then pointed to a nearby mausoleum, an awed look on his ratty face. ‘You know who’s in there?’

  ‘Rudolph Valentino.’

  ‘Oh, I told you already.’

  ‘Every time, Eddie. You tell me every fucking time.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ Eddie nodded at DeCecco, who was holding back a few paces.

  ‘New partner. What have you got for me, Eddie?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, Jeez, sorry about Officer Dista – I liked him.’

  ‘What have you got for me?’

  ‘Hey, new guy,’ Eddie said. ‘Come over here.’

  DeCecco approached. ‘What?’

  ‘You know all these people in here? They’re dead famous.’ He convulsed with laughter.

  ‘Eddie!’ Larry kept his hands to himself but walked his informant back against the monument until they were practically touching noses. ‘If I wanted jokes I’d be in the Comedy Store, not here talking to you.’