by April Smith
He nodded, peering up. “Exterior video cameras?”
I scoped the cornice of the brick frontier-style building. “No such luck.”
Peering through the gate I saw polished spheres and tarot cards in the window of Crystal Dreams, along with a cockamamy assortment of straw hats, brand-name backpacks, headphones and handbags, most likely stolen. I took out my pad and sketched the scene, indicating the vitamin store that was adjacent, the greeting card shop on the other side, making note of the position of the fountain and the shuttered carts where a stalker could hide. I sat on a bench and let Juliana’s presence come to me: an unformed girl with an ordinary longhaired look who doesn’t want to feel ordinary.
“Her A-list friends are waiting at Johnny Rockets the next block down. If she has the goods, no problem. If she doesn’t, she’s sitting here, scared out of her mind about how she’s ever going to show her face in school.” “Maybe she doesn’t care,” said Andrew.
I shook my head. “She’s vulnerable. Needy. Her violin fell apart, for God’s sake. She can’t go back to the cool kids with nothing.”
Andrew sat heavily beside me.
“I’m too old for this.”
“Get outta town,” I said of the empty Promenade. “This is the most exciting part.”
“I’m just saying, don’t get carried away.”
“With what?”
“Overidentifying. You don’t know anything about this girl.”
But I felt that I did. I knew something. She was an outsider who wanted to belong.
“What if she gets on a bus?” I riffed. “Winds up on the Strip. Or the Beverly Center, runs out of steam. She’s a good girl, doesn’t do this kind of thing. It’s late, she better call Mom, but she doesn’t. Why?”
Andrew: “Because she’s come into harm’s way.”
We sat in silence. A wind blew up. Strings of white lightbulbs flexed and dipped.
“What do you say, baby? Let’s go home.”
I snuggled against him. “How about Amsterdam?”
He had heard such improbabilities before and indulged me with an arm around the shoulder.
“Although,” I considered, “I’d take the Sandpiper motel.”
“The one up the coast? That was just a shitty little beach joint.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
He was silent, fingering my hair, and we watched the lights, like birds caught in a net, straining to release a flight of radiance from the gloomy trees.
I wish I had asked how he really felt about what happened at the Sandpiper, but I was afraid to push. I sensed he was backpedaling from the idea of living together, and that made me tentative. Still, it was a mistake. I wish I had understood more about the things he said up the coast in Cambria. I wish I had taken that quiet moment on the bench, before everything broke loose, to ask the questions that kept nosing up like shoots too green to tell what fine — or hideous — flowering might unfold.
“Come on, it’s freezing.”
I took his big warm hand. “I hope Juliana isn’t on the street tonight.”
I had become aware of a homeless African-American man on a nearby bench, fists in pockets. Every time his eyes fluttered closed, he jerked himself awake. Now another transient, a white guy with a huge belly, was lumbering toward a doorway.
Andrew was suddenly on his feet.
“Where’re you going?”
“That’s Willie John Black. Hey, Willie!”
The man looked over slowly.
Andrew said, “Remember me?”
“Sure I remember you,” he said, but seemed to need a little help.
“Detective Berringer.”
“Of course.” The man raised a hand, which was weighted down by a small, filthy, formerly yellow day pack. “How are you, Detective?”
“Good. How are you, my man?”
“Well, I was just going to claim this doorway. It’s a double, you see.”
It was the entrance to a vintage clothing store with side-by-side glass doors, room enough to lie down and stretch out. Willie lowered his small pack and a bedroll.
“Just put down my gear …”
Every move was shaky and painfully deliberate. I made him for fifty or sixty: matted white hair and a full white beard stained yellow around the lips. He wore a clean blue sweatshirt that said Beverly Hills 90210, paint-splattered pants and enormous round-toed boots with red nylon laces that were loose because he could not bend to tie them.
“You’re not going to bust me?” Willie said.
Andrew laughed and patted his shoulder.
“Last time I busted you had to be eight or ten years ago, when I was on the street.”
“You remember that?” said Willie shyly.
“Sure do.”
“I remember you, too. You were always nice. Always a gentleman. Even when you arrested me.”
“This is Willie’s doorway,” Andrew explained, with a significant look because it was directly across from Crystal Dreams.
“Used to be a bookstore,” Willie said.
“You hang out in this doorway a lot?” I asked.
“Sometimes I go up to the 7-Eleven. Up near Saint Anne’s. They’ve got a serenity meeting and a men’s room I can have access to. Sometimes I go down to that place behind the Holiday Inn. They’ve got soup. You can get a paper bag lunch.” It was hard to see what was going on underneath the hair and beard. His face was ruddy and weathered, and his eyes — I tried to find his eyes — were flat disks, faintly green. They slid away and came back to me.
“What’s your name?” he asked. I gave him my card and we shook hands. His was heavy and rough and imbedded with hard black grime.
“You go up to the 7-Eleven, but you come back?”
“Sometimes I penny-cup for a meal. A lot of people pass by here.”
That made sense. There would be crowds from the movie theaters and pedestrians streaming from across the street.
Andrew showed him the picture of Juliana.
“Did you ever see this girl?”
The paper trembled in Willie’s hands.
“Yup. I’ve seen her. Many, many times.”
My heart kicked up.
“Where?”
He seemed lost in the picture.
“Have you seen her around the Promenade?”
“Oh, yes,” said Willie. “She’s a regular.”
He handed it back.
“Look,” said Andrew, “can we buy you some dinner?”
Willie looked around. “Don’t want to lose my place. The man said it’s going to rain again.”
He swayed, tired on his feet.
“Willie,” I said, “this girl was kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped?”
“We think she was here, yesterday, sitting on that bench in front of Crystal Dreams.”
“Did you see her,” Andrew prompted, “sitting on that bench?”
Willie squinted through the hazy light.
“Yup. I’ve seen her. Talking to that man with the camera.”
Sometimes you hit it. Sometimes the silver dollars tumble right out into your hands.
“Can you describe him?”
“Oh, he’s been around here. I think he must be a tourist from Arizona.”
“How do you know?”
“We talk.”
“You and the man?”
“Oh, sure. He gives me a hard time about my gear,” said Willie, moving the grimy pack aside with a big round toe. “Told me to get it disinfected for bugs.”
Andrew and I were like hounds baying on the leash.
“Tell us about him.”
“What was his name? What did he look like?”
“White fellow.”
“How old?”
Willie shrugged. “Young.”
“What kind of camera?”
“Pretty fancy camera. Called him ‘Arizona’ because he was always talking about Arizona. Wanted to go back there. Didn’t like it here in California. We had some deep talks.
I told him he could count on me. You have to take care of your own.” “Was he a transient?”
Willie considered what it meant to be a transient.
“Never saw him up at the 7-Eleven.”
“Did he have a van? A dark green van?”
“Van? Don’t know. Never offered me a ride. But he did seem eager to leave.”
“What didn’t he like about California?” I asked.
“Wanted to go back to where he came from. Just like me. I’m originally from New Orleans. That’s where I’ve been trying to get back to, soon as I can recover my property.”
“But you saw him talking to this girl.” Andrew put the picture in front of Willie’s nose. “When?”
“On and off.”
“Yesterday?”
“Might have been.”
Willie lowered himself slowly and with great weariness, hands feeling along the glass door, until, with a sigh, he found that he was sitting on the bedroll. He was finished.
“Thanks for all your help.”
“I want to help out,” echoed Willie, and his eyes rolled up at us with a serious and sad expression. Everything he said had borne the same monotone, as if the world he saw through those colorless eyes was only gray-on-gray.
Andrew was gazing down at him.
“It’s going to rain, buddy. Let me give you a ride to the shelter.”
“That’s very nice of you, but I’m waiting for a dude named Steve. We’re going up to Malibu. He has access to a propane stove,” said Willie with a meaningful raise of white eyebrows. “It’s better to stay together because of street violence. That way we can maintain a reasonable situation.” “You’re not going up to Malibu tonight.”
Willie thought about this and nodded his shaggy head. “That’s true, I have to work.”
“What kind of work do you do?” I asked curiously.
“I travel around America for the national Defense Department,” he said. “I have an ID which the El Monte police took away. That’s what I’m talking about, trying to regain my property. They also impounded my vehicle. My job is to drive randomly throughout the United States and data-process sponge cake in the U.S. population.” I had the woozy feeling of being lifted up and set back down, like bobbing in a wave.
“Sponge cake?”
“‘Sponge cake’ is a code name that refers to Patricia Hearst, who was an individual from the Soviet Union who was being data-processed to be a high warden in the NOBD. That’s what I was trained to do, you see. Sometimes I would encounter a candlelight situation.” Andrew was looking away. A damp breeze lifted up the back of his hair.
“A candlelight situation,” Willie explained, “is an entity case where the future and today merge together.”
I thought for a moment, just one moment, he was pulling the greatest joke of all time. Then it all drained out of me.
“Willie,” I said gently, “have you ever been in a hospital?”
“Oh, yes. Yes. I was flying a Cobra and slammed into a mountain in Wyoming called Devil’s Ring. They put me in the hospital.”
“Did they give you medication?”
“They just give me medication and you talk to someone and they release you. I’m taking medication right now,” said Willie. “I’m a depressed person right now. I personally knew Sylvester Stallone in the HBD. He was killed in nineteen seventy.” Willie said these things with the same measured dullness as before. I felt as if I were in the presence of something enormous, like the pulsing of the stars.
I gave him ten bucks and said, “Take care of yourself.”
“What did you say your name was?”
I gave him another card.
“Thank you. I’m generally around here, if you want to talk to me.”
“God bless,” said Andrew.
We left him sitting cross-legged in the doorway, a mound of bedroll and scraggly white hair.
“Sometimes they whip up a vehicle and leave me someplace,” he called after us.
As we walked through the deserted street, I laid my head against Andrew’s shoulder, certain that they did.
And I dreamed we were in Amsterdam, walking hand in hand, and it was wet and cold and there were lights on the canals.
Five
Out of nowhere came the smell of cooking onions and the low chatter of the TV. I sat up in bed, awake, heart pounding, late for something I could not remember. Stocks were being traded in New York, but here it was still dark, a little after 6 a.m., Day Three. And the girl was still missing.
We had spent the last two nights in my apartment in Marina Del Rey, averaging about four hours’ sleep, which meant you were never out of the roar. Your eyes might be closed, but case points kept flipping through your brain: Jumpy parents. Employee records. Tax returns. A man with a camera. Sylvester Stallone. Rich kids talking rap and smoking weed and a voice in the night, fifteen years old, begging for some hopped-up piece of shit to bestow upon her the privilege of her life.
We had a bulletin out on the van that had been hovering around the Third Street Promenade: a dark green 1989 Dodge, identified separately by both youngsters, Stephanie and Ethan, after looking through police files. The Korean gang member, David Yi, who had stolen a load of spandex from the Meyer-Murphy factory and had been convicted, at least in part by testimony from Juliana’s dad, was at present serving four years in state prison on a plea bargain and not considered to be a suspect.
We’d had briefings every day at the police station, in a windowless lounge next to a kitchen that our techs had transformed into a command post: secured phones, a white board on an easel, a chain of laptops to input Rapid Start — software designed to track every byte of information relevant to the investigation, from interviews to lab reports, photos, computer searches, archives and dust bunnies under the bed. Rapid Start was a cutting-edge tool for examining the particulars and getting the overview. One pair of Big Eyes would be responsible for reading every page of Rapid Start every day: looking for patterns, searching out disconnects — the unanswered questions and the links.
Big Eyes. That would be me.
The case had a name:
UNSUB
Juliana Meyer-Murphy — Victim
Santa Monica Kidnapping
And that’s all we had.
Halfway out of bed I stole one more moment, to inhale the slow rich bloom of coffee and listen with pleasure to Andrew banging cabinet doors in the kitchen. My grandmother’s quilt lay on the carpet where it had been kicked; jasmine-scented massage oil stood, uncapped, next to a vibrator in full view on the nightstand. I slipped it back under the bed. We had been short of time that morning, forced to take the express route — which, in a tender way, seemed in keeping with our newfound teamwork on the job. He had been right, at the beach, in the parking lot, when he said it would be a kick. More than right. We were free and we were flying. We were hanging in that buoyant pocket in the sky.
I swung into the living room. Milky white light was coming through the curtains. As I drew them back, rows and rows of boats docked at the huge Marina were becoming visible in random jigsaw pieces out of a pale mist — hulls, rigging, motors, masts.
“Sleep well?” Andrew wiggled his nose with obnoxious smugness, then went back to assembling breakfast burritos.
“Pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”
He said, “Aren’t you?”
A fresh copy of today’s LA Times lay on the counter. Flipping to the local section I saw no mention of the Santa Monica kidnapping.
“Looks like we still haven’t made the news.”
“From your lips.”
Mortified that her daughter, Stephanie, had sent Juliana on a fool’s errand, spunky Mrs. Kent organized a “community response,” apparently believing that she and her TV director husband knew more about crime fighting than we did. Laurel West Academy parents came running, with posters, fliers, search parties at the ready and showbiz contacts speed-dialing the story to the national news — exactly wrong. I thought we had bee
n clear on Day One that she would not discuss the case. You didn’t want to panic the suspect, have him escalate to murder if the victim wasn’t already dead. Special Agent in Charge Robert Galloway had not been pleased. This was not the slick “new politics” of an efficient Bureau. This was anarchy. I had to go back to the Kents’ and kick privileged ass. Get them to understand we had a media blackout in effect on this case.
“Don’t you like my new furniture?”
“Yeah,” said Andrew absently, “it’s nice.”
I put my arms around him. “Nicer than that dark old stuff in your father’s place.”
“You are like a little terrier,” he said. “Don’t you ever let go?”
Holding tighter, “Nope.”
I had finally sprung for a whole new deal, all at once, on sale at Plummers. I am a klutz with colors, it was the worst day of my life, but three hours later I staggered out of there having committed to a blonde wood (actually particle board) entertainment center which faced a couch and two small wicker love seats on either side of a coffee table.
The coffee table was a dark varnished rose with a dandy drawer in which I kept a Colt.32 my enlightened grandfather had given to me when I went to college, as protection against what he called “the blacks,” as if I were to single-handedly hold off a revolutionary siege at UC — Santa Barbara. When I was arranging the furniture, I stowed the gun in the drawer. Poppy would be proud. The apartment was fortified.
The matching cushions on the love seats and couch were a bold tropical pattern in deep plums and greens, which more or less went with the dark gray carpeting. I had one of those curving chrome lamps you can bend all the way down to read by and some glass vases with dried flowers, which I bought at the farmers’ market that weekend, giddy with success. The entertainment center almost had enough shelves for the hundreds of mystery and sci-fi paperbacks I was always trading and borrowing, no longer in piles along the wall.
The place looked like a grown-up lived there. A grown-up who kept tonic and limes in the refrigerator, turkey bologna, hummus, some very nice imported Colby cheese, one percent milk, OJ with calcium, always a couple of beers, usually a leftover pasta primavera or soggy salad in a box, fruit in the bin and Zen muffins in the freezer, along with a slew of frozen diet entrées. A grown-up whose most-used appliance was the blender, with an industrial-sized crock of vanilla protein powder at the ready.