Laguna Heat

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “This cactus makes my brain loose,” Theodore began. “I’m rememberin’ some more of what Algernon told me. He said punks knew he had money at first, then it got changed to sound more like one punk—kept sayin’ him this and he that. I think he was drunker’n hell too. Said this guy had it in for him for a long time. Got reasons to believe he’s comin’ back to get me, he said. Come to think of it, it sounded less like money than hurt he was after. He said havin’ a hog like me around might keep him safe. He said he’d pay for his sinnin’ when he was dead and he wasn’t in a hurry to get that way. Yeah, that’s what he talked like.” Theodore reclaimed the bottle and gulped. “And he told me he wasn’t worried just for himself, but some other people, too.”

  “Any by name?”

  “He said, I think there’s more than me in danger. A fine old woman who lives in town might be, too. Hope it’s Greeley, he said. What the fuck, I said, call the cops, Tim. He said it wasn’t the kind of matter cops could handle. Guess he was right on that one, eh, Shephard?”

  Theodore growled and wheezed: a laugh. Shephard, feeling the lugubrious effects of tequila, took the statement broadside and felt shamed. It was a feeling he’d had often as a rookie, often too in his first few years as a cop. But over time he had built up that protective coating that any cop who stays a cop needs. Wade had lost his stomach for it. No surprise. Somewhere it must all be stored up, he thought, as Theodore passed back the bottle. Somewhere inside everything that you deflect collects. He knew it was true. When he drank he could feel those deflected items stirring, some thick and sad, like those he had felt just now, others jagged and painful, like a river of broken glass trying to get out. His father had told him once that cops are the true garbage collectors of society, that cops see, consume, and store the million instances of ugliness that everyone else wants to put out of their lives. The suicides, the murders, the slow poisonings, the “accidents” where a sober young man plows a new car into a lightpole at a modest and accurate forty miles an hour. We see it, Wade had said; the rest just get it from the papers.

  “How’s the old man?” Theodore asked.

  “Strong. Happy. Not the same man I grew up with.”

  Theodore seemed to ponder this. He rubbed his beard and spit. “What do you think it was got him into the God business instead of bein’ a cop?”

  Shephard had thought about it often himself. “He said once that the pains of loss are the bricks of miracles. I think that might explain it.” Shephard was aware that his mind, now tequila-drenched, was not altogether clear. He thought of Jane Algernon and wondered what she was doing.

  “That’s good. I’d use it in one o’ my books ’cept there ain’t no miracles in the story of a fat bodyguard like me. Pass that bottle, jackass.”

  “Wonder if it’s worth it?” Shephard asked.

  “What worth what?”

  “The pain, just for a miracle.”

  Theodore responded only after a long, silent pause. “Everybody’s got the hurt. Takes a special sort like your old man to turn it into somethin’ decent. Miracles go around to lots of folks, they don’t just go into somebody’s wallet. Most of us can’t make no miracle even if we tried. We just rot and die. ’Course, anybody knows the hurt, your old man does. Tequila, young Shephard?”

  Shephard took the bottle, which seemed suddenly heavy, and drank. His thoughts rioted. “When I was a kid, he used to leave at night with a bucket and a fishing pole. Told me he was going fishing. But he never came back with anything. This was once a month or so, every few weeks. So one night I followed him. I had a little motorcycle then, so I cut the lights and he didn’t know I was behind him. All the way to the pier south of town. He left his bucket in the car and walked onto the pier. I followed but stayed so he couldn’t see me in the shadows. He walked right down the center of it, never looked to one side or the other, walked with his head down faster and faster. Had to hustle to keep up. And when he got to the end he just kept on walking, right over the edge and into the water. He’d told me a hundred times not to jump the pier because once a month the tides are low enough to kill you. He never even looked over the side. He didn’t want to know. He just walked off the edge and swam back to shore. I watched him and stood there an hour trying to figure out why he did it. I couldn’t figure it out. Still haven’t. Nothing but rocks under that pier at low tide. Dried his clothes at a laundromat so I wouldn’t know.”

  “What with your momma bein’ shot dead, maybe it was understandable. I ain’t no genius, but I figure having your old lady dying in front of you must make for a whole heap of miracle bricks.” Theodore held up the bottle and the moon perched on top of it. “Maybe they was gettin’ too heavy for him.”

  “I’m basically uncompromising when it comes to loss,” Shephard announced, his words now running well ahead of his ability to think. “I mean there’s too much of it to even be an issue. You go to sleep, you get up. Morris Mumford is a helluva loss to me. But I’ll be damned, Theodore, if I was standing there again if I wouldn’t shoot him again, too. Maybe that’s the cactus talking. Maybe those are just words. Maybe that’s just a miracle brick Morris paid for and nobody’s ever gonna pick up.”

  “You ain’t no reverend, Shephard. You’re just a scrawny cop with too much tequila in him. Pass that tequila, faggot.”

  Shephard felt an overwhelming desire to do something, but the feeling passed.

  “What happened to that sonofabitch shot your momma? Dead, ain’t he?”

  “Yeah. Died in prison a while ago.”

  “Well, don’t go gettin’ hard on yourself,” Theodore growled. “The world ain’t set up for doin’ decent. Look at it. Some dumbass kid takes a knife to a cop because the cop’s the closest thing he can hate. You shoot the kid so he don’t do the same to you. The newspapers make a buck sellin’ it, the lawyers get rich talking about it. And some pecker in office makes a committee to study the problem. Nobody gives a shit about Morris in the end, except maybe you. You’re probably the only one who’ll remember him twenty years from now.”

  Shephard weighed this argument against another jolt of tequila, and found it wanting.

  “He had a girl,” he said. “I saw her.”

  “She’ll do better. So don’t worry it to death. The only people who do any good in the world are whores and bartenders. Don’t worry it. It don’t look good on you.”

  “I guess we got off the topic.”

  “We didn’t have no fuckin’ topic. Hang tight, little runt. You want me to break that feller’s arms, just gimme a call.”

  Suddenly the roar of Little Theodore’s Harley burst across the night, pounding Shephard from a hundred inebriated angles, rattling his teeth. He pushed the starter and the LaVerda joined the outrage, a hoarse, low growl that spun higher and faster as he twisted the throttle. Theodore hurled the empty bottle into the darkness and his bike jerked ahead. They rode slowly through the lot, side by side past the billboard of Jesus and the children until they hit the boulevard and bellowed away in different directions.

  Shephard returned to his denuded apartment early in the morning. Stripped to bare essentials, the place suggested beginnings or endings, but no present. And what is the present but an exit from the past and a waiting for the future, he wondered gloomily as he leaned over the toilet and gave up his tequila. Crossing the bathroom he caught his reflection, spectral and hollow, studying him from the mirror. “I’m starting over,” he mumbled.

  He called his father. “Was it worth it, pop?”

  “Tommy? It’s—”

  “Quarter ’til three. Was it?”

  “Was what? Have you been drinking?”

  “A tad. Gotta tell me. Was the miracle worth the pain?” Shephard’s voice sounded as if it came from underwater.

  A pause. “Tommy, go to sleep. I’ll talk to you when you’re sober.”

  “And one more thing …” Shephard tried to gather his thoughts, but they seemed to be fraying like cut rope inside his head. “The pier. How come wal
king off the pier with nothing but rocks once a month? I’m talking clarification.”

  “Tommy? Let me tell you something. Don’t look for the bad. Don’t play the dark notes, son, until they’re all you’ve got left to play. Forgive what you can’t change. Can you understand that? Now go to sleep. I’ll see you for lunch on Friday, all right?”

  “Clarification.”

  Wade hung up.

  A few minutes later Shephard was asleep, relinquishing his dreams once again to the boy with the knife.

  EIGHT

  He pulled the Mustang off Laguna Canyon Road and parked under the willow tree. The coffee from his Thermos was hot, and the morning news was filled with money market advertisements and city council trivia. Across the yard he could see that his card had been removed from the chain-link fence, and that the sea lion was slouched like a giant slug against the side of its pen. Shephard’s head ached vengefully, hangover on top of concussion, but his mind was clear and uncluttered. He chewed four aspirins and waited for Jane Algernon.

  Half an hour later he heard a door slam and she appeared on the porch. She shot a disdainful glance his way, then walked across the yard in front of him, stopping to pull the waders from the clothesline. She was dressed in a sweatshirt and shorts, and Shephard felt like he shouldn’t watch her step into the boots, but he did anyway. He took a hot gulp of coffee and stepped out of the car.

  “Miss Algernon, delightful we meet again,” he said with cheer. She glared at him as she turned to a freezer beside the house and pulled out a bag. Her face looked haggard and sleepless. Shephard watched the fish slide like melted silver from the bag into a bucket at her feet. She took the bucket to a garden hose and rinsed off the sea lion’s breakfast. When she stepped into the pen the animal rushed to her side with a croak, raising its slick head to be stroked. She patted it and dropped a fish into its mouth. Like Cal without ears, he noted. “Fresh frozen?”

  “Oh,” she said with a smile. He had never known a smile could be so damaging and beautiful at the same time. He felt impaled on it. “It’s the detective again. I used to enjoy these few moments alone, every morning, but not since he started coming here. What can I do for you, little man?”

  “I wondered if you changed your mind about helping me. The handwriting samples I asked you for. The picture of your father, the business books. I want you to tell me about him. I thought that you might—”

  “But I haven’t. And I won’t. And strange as it may seem, if you park in my driveway or come onto my property again, I’m going to call the police.” She dropped another fish, which was caught mid-air and mid-croak. The animal spun in self-satisfaction, slid into the pool, sped around it without visible effort, then slapped back out and stopped at her feet again. Head-first everywhere, he thought, like Pete Rose.

  “Miss Algernon, I have reason to believe that—”

  “He has reason to believe,” she told the beast. “He had no reason to believe before, but now he does. Did the detective find God last night?” She dangled a fish, and Shephard studied the length of her body, the rounded, lovely thighs above the rubber.

  “Reason to believe that other people may be in danger from the man who killed your father,” he blurted quickly.

  She shook her head and aimed the smile at him again. Looking at it, he felt loathsome, freakish. She studied him for what seemed an hour, then reached some kind of conclusion. She turned back to the animal, still dangling the fish.

  “Now the detective is bluffing the witness,” she said. “But that’s okay, because really, he isn’t here.” She tossed the fish into the pool and the sea lion heaved after it. Shephard waited a long time for her attention to return to him, then began to wonder if indeed he were not really there. With each throb in his head, patience waned. Screw it, he thought.

  “Not here? Yeah, I’m not here.” He was less aware of stepping across the yard to the garden hose than he was of simply watching himself do it. He watched as he picked up the nozzle, carried it to the pen fence, and hosed down the young woman inside. The water burst into shiny spray as it hit her, dazzling in the morning sun. “She lives in town somewhere. I don’t know her name, her age, or why she’s in danger. She might even be you,” he heard himself saying. She faced him throughout the soaking, arms at her sides, hair clinging to her face in wet strands, her face clenched in hatred, the sea lion croaking gleefully as he put his streamlined face into the bucket of fish she had just dropped.

  He hooked the nozzle into the chain link when he was finished. “Your father lived the last days of his life in terror, I just found out. He knew what was going to happen, and it did. If he never told you about it, I guess I can understand why. Have a wonderful life, Miss Algernon.”

  Back in the Mustang, he was pleased to find his coffee still warm.

  Then, a sudden beating on the window beside his face. Through the glass her voice was muted but clear, as if on a telephone.

  “Bastard! Open that door, you bastard!” A black wader thumped against the glass. Then her fists, small and pink, flattening not inches from his head. Her eyes were wide, her hair soaked and sticking to her face, her voice shrill and desperate. “Open that door, you bastard!” Her fists hit the window in thuds, like big drops of rain. Shephard stared through the glass at her, then pointed at the door lock, which was all the way up. She threw open the door and pounced, nails, teeth, fists pounding wildly—he heard them hitting the dash, the leather seats, even the horn once, which honked quickly and sent the sea lion into a frenzied croak—then a moment’s pause before a black wader blotted out the sunlight to his left and thwacked against his head with the sound of a mop hitting a floor. He was aware of his shirt tearing, a hot gouging in his ribs, and the repeated curse, “I hate you, I hate you, you little bastard!”

  They spilled onto the lawn, where Jane, wader still flailing, found distinct advantage. Shephard covered up under elbows and hands, trying to keep the stitches intact. The wader slammed methodically into his ribs and head, punctuated by gasps and broken phrases. “You … bastard … get you … sonofa …” Shephard heard the sea lion clapping and croaking at the chance finally to be the spectator.

  The blows began to slow and the words started to lose their fury. Her voice dissipated into tired panting, then a final grunt as she slammed the wader once more into his ribs, then let it fall to the ground. Still covering himself, he could hear her a few steps away, sobbing fast and shallow as if she were choking. He lowered an elbow for a look.

  Her back was to him; she had her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. The noisy sea lion looped his pen again, fired with excitement.

  “Shut up, Buster,” she said. “Just shut up.”

  Shephard plopped back into the car and poured some coffee into the plastic cup. The back of his head was sticky and his shirt blood-stained at the elbow. From a safe distance he offered Jane Algernon the coffee. She looked at him through a shock of matted brown hair, an expression not of victory or surrender, but relief. Brushing the hair away from her face, she shook her head. Shephard backed off and lit a cigarette.

  “Okay,” she said evenly, though her voice trembled. “Let’s get some ground rules straight. I’ll help you if I can. I’m too tired right now to care who killed my father, but if someone else is in danger I feel … obligated to help. I can get you the handwriting, his business ledger, some photographs. And I’ll tell you what I can about him on the promise that you’ll leave your cheap, goddamned budget psychologizing out of it. I don’t need your analysis, I don’t need your guilt, I don’t need you.”

  The inside of Jane Algernon’s cottage was small but neat. In contrast to the disheveled exterior, the living room gleamed with modern, high-tech appointments: a glass coffee table sat in the middle, surrounded by chrome and green velvet chairs, a low couch that matched them, a square glass end table. From one side of the room a long-necked chrome lamp swung outward to hang above the table; in the other stood a mirrored shelf containing stereo components and a sma
ll television, surrounded by plants. A breakfast nook built off the living room had more chrome and glass and a palm tree in a high chrome pot. The walls were pale salmon, the carpet a blue-gray. Shephard sat down in front of the coffee table. She crossed in front of him and disappeared into the bedroom. A moment later she was back with a damp washcloth, which she tossed to him, and a photo album that she opened over her legs when she sat down on the couch.

  “Nice place,” he said, dabbing at his bandage. Not so nice a lady, he thought. She glanced at him and handed him a snapshot.

  “My father and Rebecca, taken last year. He was in good shape for a man his age. Tall and strong.” Shephard examined the picture in the ample light of the living room. Tim Algernon sat atop the corral, Rebecca standing at his side, her face pressed into his open hand. Jane reclaimed the picture and put it back in its place. Then another, this time of her father and herself inside what looked like a barn. “That was taken five years ago. It’s the most recent one of us together. Like I said, we hadn’t been close the last few years.”

  “How often did you see him, recently?” She put back the picture. Shephard brought out his notebook, which was sadly bent from the fray.

  “See him? Once a month maybe. Hi, how are you, that was all. People grow apart.”

  “Yes. May I?” Jane handed Shephard the photo album, then crossed her long legs over the velvet and leaned back. “When was the last time you saw him?” He leafed through the book. Tim Algernon riding Rebecca, Jane atop another mare, Jane with Buster the sea lion in his pen, Jane and a young man with their arms around each other, a close-up of Buster, a quiet shot of sunlight on a vase of flowers. He looked up.