by J. R. Rain
A car pulled up behind me, its headlights blasting into my side mirrors. I verified that it wasn’t a police car, then ignored it.
There was no indication that the DFG had received Hansen’s report or done anything about it. Then again, I wasn’t sure what they could or should do about it. From all indication, Mitch Golden and his crew had been threatened by Mexican fishermen poaching illegally in U.S. waters.
A minute or two later, after some grade-A investigative pondering, I realized the car was still behind me. I looked again in my side mirror. The driver appeared to be doing a lot of angry gesticulating.
By my estimates, I had left enough room for a car to squeeze in behind me. In a city where parking was at a premium—even illegal parking—I wasn’t about to give up my spot, not when I had such a clear view of Panama Joe’s.
The driver waited some more, then turned into the driveway, heading no doubt for the bank’s drive-thru ATM. He might have clipped my rear bumper as he did so but I didn’t give a damn. Hell, a nicked bumper gave my van a sort of authentic, shabby-chic look.
A few minutes later, my van rocked slightly again, and a quick glance in my driver’s side mirror showed that my pal had left the bank, and none too gracefully. He pulled up next to me and stopped, effectively blocking traffic. His passenger side window slid down.
“Hey, asshole,” he said. “You’re blocking the fucking driveway.”
He’d stopped in the middle of the street to relay this information to me. I glanced back at the traffic he was creating, which was quickly piling up behind him. “You don’t say?”
“Yeah, I do say, muthafucka.” He was a smallish guy with a thick neck and red hair. He leaned across the passenger seat and used his smart phone to snap a picture of the fake magnetized sign along the side of my van. “And we’ll see what your boss has to say, muthafucka.”
“Please, mister. Not my boss.”
“Fuck you, muthafucka.”
And he sped off. I watched him go, weaving through traffic, high on his own adrenaline rush. At one point, he nearly sideswiped a little Miata. He promptly flipped the bird to the driver of the Miata. Probably threw in a “muthafucka,” too.
With the excitement over, I went back to studying the bar. According to Hansen’s file, Mitch had been having a drink with two fellow activists who worked for Shark Heroes, the non-profit organization owned and operated by Mitch and Heidi. Both workers were contacted by Hansen. Both gave in-depth interviews. Both had watched Mitch Golden head to his car. Neither had seen him enter his car or leave in his car, which wasn’t surprising since his car had been found in the same parking lot the next day.
He never made it to his car, I thought.
Someone had either been waiting for him, or Mitch had entered another person’s car willingly, or forcibly.
I thought about that as I watched a heavy flow of pedestrians work their way down Second Avenue. Most of the pedestrians were young people. Most seemed drunk. All were loud.
From where I sat in my van, I could see behind Panama Joe’s. There was a small parking lot where Mitch Golden’s car had been found. Although two single lights illuminated the parking lot, it looked dark and forgotten. I suspected a surprise attack on someone would go unnoticed. Also, according to Hansen’s notes, there was no parking lot surveillance, even though a sign near the driveway entrance into the lot proclaimed there to be one. False advertising.
My cell rang. I glanced at the faceplate. The call was being forwarded from another number. My fake plumbing number.
“Al’s Plumbing,” I said.
“Lemme speak with fucking Al.”
“You fucking got ’em.”
“Good, ’cause you’ve got a real asshole working for you.”
“We don’t like assholes here at Al’s Plumbing, where the customer’s always right, except when they’re wrong. Did you get his name?”
“Hell, no.”
“What did he look like?”
“Hell if know.”
“Did he have a sort of roguish charm, an impish smile?”
“More like a dumb jock with a big head.”
“Right. What was he driving?”
“A white van that was blocking the B of A.”
“So, there was no room to pull in behind him?”
“Hell no.”
“None at all?”
“Shit, I don’t know.”
“Would careful and considerate driving have solved your problem?”
“Fuck that. And fuck you, too, muthafucka.”
“Will do. Here at Al’s Plumbing, the customer always comes first.”
“Fuck you.”
“Tell a friend.”
“Muthafucka.”
Chapter Five
Fifteen minutes later, I pulled away from the curb and parked illegally again, this time directly behind the bar’s back door. I took off the “Al’s Plumbing” sign and replaced it with a “Joe’s Catering” sign.
Did he say big head?
I sighed and headed inside the bar, where the bartender was a good-looking Asian guy with spiky hair. He had a big, friendly smile, which might be why all the ladies were sitting in barstools around him.
He turned his attention from a beautiful blond who might have actually batted her eyes at him, and focused on me. As he did so, one of the women must have said something flirty that I missed, and the guy looked genuinely embarrassed.
“What can I get you?” he asked.
Spiky here was my guy. He fit Hansen’s description in his notes to a T. Or to a spike. Sometimes, as a private investigator, you get lucky.
“Bass Pale Ale,” I said. “And some information.”
“What kind of information?”
I took out one of my business cards and handed it to him. As I handed him the card, he handed me a dark bottle of the good stuff. Now that’s what I call a hand-off.
“I’m here about Mitch Golden, a customer of yours.”
“They still haven’t found him?”
“Not yet.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“You spoke to Detective Hansen?” I asked.
“Yeah, he came by a few days ago.”
“You mind if I ask you what you told him?”
He shrugged. “I don’t mind.”
Actually, I knew exactly what he told him, since his statement was in Hansen’s report, but it’s always nice to corroborate a witness’s facts.
“I told him that guy Mitch had come in for a couple of drinks with two other guys. They sat at that table over there.” He pointed to a table near the big glass window at the front of the bar.
“Any reason why you might remember three random guys?” I asked.
“They’re regulars, actually. I see them all the time.”
“You told Detective Hansen you’d seen them only a few times.”
“Same thing.”
“Not really,” I said.
“You see someone three or four times in my business, and they start feeling like regulars.”
Actually, I know a little something about drinking, since I happen to do a lot of it. Too much, sadly. Regulars at bars are a lot different than the casual drinker. Casual drinkers come in maybe once, twice a week with friends. Regulars get shit-faced nightly.
So, which was it?
Except that Spiky and his good-natured smile had suddenly turned a little defensive. It could have been my imagination, but his spiky hair, held in place by an unknowable amount of gel, might have quivered a little in irritation.
I didn’t want to lose Spiky, and I didn’t want his female admirers to attack my giant head with pitchforks, and so I said, “Okay, I get it. Same thing. Did you happen to notice if they met with anyone?”
“Just the three of them.”
“No one came up to them?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Were you busy that night?”
“Sort of.”
According to the police report, i
t had been a quiet night. Strike two. A good witness he would not make. Bad witnesses were generally bad for a reason: they had something to hide.
I sipped on my beer. I could see the bartender’s mind working. I knew it was working because his spiky hair was shivering. I also knew he was trying to remember exactly what he had told Hansen just a few days earlier. He knew the importance of having his testimony line up.
“How long were Mitch and his two friends here?”
“Hard to say. An hour or two.”
An hour or two didn’t help anyone. Too big of a gap. I decided not to press him with this, as I sensed I was losing him. I wasn’t a cop. He didn’t have to answer my questions. Hell, he didn’t have to answer a cop’s questions, either, if he really wanted to play that game.
So far, he was cooperating, which was telling in itself. He knew something, but not much. So what was he hiding? Maybe nothing. Maybe he always panicked when interviewed about anything. I suspected his good looks and perfect spikes had gotten him far in life.
I asked, “Do you know if Mitch Golden was involved in drugs?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he sell drugs?”
His eyes shifted slightly, and I knew I had nailed it. Strike three. His eyes came back to me quickly. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
He went back to the group of four or five women who looked visibly relieved to have their object of affection back. I placed a ten-dollar bill on the counter, and me and my big head left.
Chapter Six
I was drinking an iced tea and working my way enthusiastically through a large bag of fries at a McDonald’s in Huntington Beach, waiting for the one I knew would come.
Mind you, this wasn’t an ordinary McDonald’s. Sure, it had the prerequisite two-story jungle gym, geeky cashiers, and partially masticated chicken nuggets scattered randomly throughout the store. Sure, it had the filthy mop bucket in one corner, old-timers talking over coffees, and a large, plastic Ronald McDonald display that gave even me the heebie-jeebies.
Except, of course, this McDonald’s was different.
You see, God visited this McDonald’s, and I don’t mean that figuratively. A few years ago, at this very restaurant, I met a man named Jack. Except he was like no man I had ever met before, since or in-between. Jack knew things. About me. About others. About everything. Things he shouldn’t know. Things you wouldn’t expect him to know, especially since he appeared to be just another beach bum.
Anyway, he appeared in my life one day, and he’s always been there for me. Waiting.
Here at this McDonald’s.
And as I ate and drank, I saw him coming. He appeared first in the near distance, shambling slowly along Beach Boulevard, looking to all the world not only like a bum, but a bum with some serious issues.
He paused and let a minivan turn into the McDonald’s driveway. He waved at the people inside. They didn’t wave back. The woman, I noticed, actually stepped on the gas, leaving God—or Jack—in the dust.
He crossed the baking heat of the parking lot, shuffling and limping and smiling. Little black, yellow-eyed birds appeared behind him and he opened his hands and something came out of both of them.
No way.
It had been bird seed.
He pushed through the front door, spotted me, waved and smiled brightly. I waved and smiled brightly back as he got in line in front of a cash register. A few minutes later, he sat opposite me holding a steaming cup of black coffee.
“It’s been a while, Jim,” he said pleasantly.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes twinkled. “Sorry for what?”
“For not coming in to see you sooner.”
“Oh, I’m around more than you know.” And he winked.
Jack was a man of indeterminate age and race. He could have been anywhere from forty to seventy, and he could have passed for Caucasian, Latino or Native American. Hell, if he told me he was Polynesian, I might have believed him. Even his hair color and eyes were indeterminate, but with me that’s not saying much. Hair and eye color were generally lost on the severely colorblind, such as myself.
“Still, I should have come see you sooner,” I said.
“You should do whatever you want, Jim.”
“It’s just that sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind when I talk to you.”
“Then don’t talk. Just sit quietly.”
“But I want to talk to you.”
He smiled at me serenely.
“I know,” I said. “I should do what I want.”
He smiled again. “Always.”
I picked up my drink and said, “I know who killed my mother.”
“You are a good detective, Jim. I’m not surprised.”
“Does God ever get surprised?”
He winked. “Rarely.”
Just then a timid little girl suddenly appeared at our table, a finger hooked in one corner of her mouth. She couldn’t have been more than three, maybe younger. She wore a flower dress and shiny black shoes, and there was ketchup on the tip of her nose. She swayed a little as she stared at Jack. Jack smiled so warmly at her that I thought he must have surely known the little girl. The little girl removed her finger from her mouth and broke into a huge smile.
“Your mother is looking for you, little one,” he said.
In that moment, the door to the jungle gym burst open. An hysterical woman scanned the room wildly, then spotted the little girl. She moved swiftly through the restaurant, took her daughter’s hand. As the little girl was led away, she looked back at Jack...and smiled.
When they were gone, I said, “She knew you.”
“The little ones often do.”
“And who are you?”
“Who do you think I am?”
We often played this game. Jack was the master of the verbal parry. The spoken sidestep. Lexical double-speak. He would have made a fine politician, actually. God for President. Now there’s a slogan.
I said, “I haven’t been here for many months, perhaps as many as six. Yet, the moment I sit down with my fries and drink, you appear.”
“And what do you think about that, Jim?”
“I think it’s damn weird. Who else but God would know I was coming today? Who else but God would know the time and date of my arrival?”
“Who else indeed?”
“You tell me.”
He sat back a little. “You think of me as separate from you, Jim, but I’m not.”
“What, exactly, does that mean?”
He leaned forward and placed his hand on my chest. He rarely touched me, and I was startled at first. His hand, I noted, smelled of dirt and asphalt. “God is in here, Jim.”
“Yes, in my heart. I’ve heard all that before.”
“For good reason, Jim.” He kept the flat of his palm on my chest; in fact, directly over my heart. Warmth radiated from his hand, seeped straight through my tee shirt and spread through me. “This is where I reside in everyone. I mean this literally, Jim.”
“You literally reside within everyone?”
“You are all not only sons and daughters of God, but you are a part of God. Do you understand this concept?”
“In a Sunday school kind of way, maybe.”
“A part of God lives in you. A part of me is you. The spark that gives you life comes from me. That spark lives in you always. I live in you always.”
“Like a parasite?”
He chuckled. “Think of a flashlight, Jim. Think of all the components that make it work. I would be the battery residing within. A very, very powerful battery.”
I thought about this, wrapping my brain around the concept.
He went on, “You have the power of God living within you. Think on that.”
I did. “So we can access the power of God? Your power?”
He smiled, pleased. “You do so every day, Jim.”
“How?”
“With your imagination.”
�
��I don’t understand.”
“Your imagination summons the power of God. Your imagination is God at work.” He paused, letting me digest this. He went on a moment later. “As you imagine something, Jim, the full power of God is summoned to it.”
“To anything?”
“Anything.”
“And what if I imagine a dragon flying over Orange County?”
“You would not believe half the things that fly over Orange County, Jim.”
In fact, I recalled reading in the newspaper just last year of something black and winged flying over Brea.
“C’mon, Jack,” I said. “A dragon? A real, honest-to-God dragon?”
“Put it this way, Jim: something that matched your level of belief would eventually come into your existence.”
“My level of belief? You mean, my dragon might actually be a balloon or a float parade.”
He nodded. “Now you’re getting it. If you truly believe that dragons don’t exist, then there is nothing that I can do to help you.”
“But if I could get myself to believe...”
“Ah,” said Jack, smiling and sitting back, “here be dragons.”
Chapter Seven
“A local fishing boat caught something in their nets this morning,” said Detective Hansen over the phone.
“Would that something happen to be Mitch Golden?” I asked.
“Boy, you private dicks are uncanny. You want me to swing by and pick you up?”
“Why not?” I said. “I was just thinking I haven’t thrown up yet this morning.”
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting with the detective in his sporty Ford Taurus. He had picked up two coffees and mercifully, no donuts. I say mercifully, because it’s hard to keep donuts down when you’re looking at a bloated corpse recently hauled up from the bottom of the ocean.
Another twenty minutes later, and we were pulling up to the commercial fishing docks in Long Beach. There was a lot of commotion not too far from us. I suspected that a dead man was at the center of the commotion.