At a gas station, Patsy bought him a prepaid cell phone—practically untraceable unless law enforcement already knew of the purchase and you were stupid enough to use it for criminal activities for more than forty-eight hours after purchasing it. Considering Patsy had made it out of the gas station shop unscathed, John felt safe dialing Philip’s number on it as they pulled out of the gas station’s parking lot.
Philip answered after one ring, sounding groggy from sleep. It was nine-thirty. John prayed he had simply worked late or had been up all night worrying about Alex. “Are you being watched?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Check outside right now. Any Crown Vics or other vehicles hanging around that you don’t recognize?”
“No. I checked already. This morning, when they let me go.”
“When who let you go?”
“San Diego PD. Hanrock County Sheriff’s. It was like a big party downtown. They had me in an interrogation room all night. I think I made them happy, but they told me not to leave town.”
The bottom of John’s stomach dropped out, but he knew he couldn’t get into it on the phone. “Can you meet me somewhere?”
Silence. Hesitation.
“Is he with you?” Philip asked.
“No. He isn’t.”
“Tell me what that means.”
“I will. If you meet with me.”
“Should I bring a gun?”
“I’m not. I lost mine. Someone took it.” He prayed this was enough to convey his meaning because he had no interest in getting more specific over the phone. He told Philip he would call him back with a place; then he hung up on him before Philip could come up with a response.
A few minutes later, they were driving past the address for Philip Bloch that Patsy had found online. Philip lived in the second-floor unit of a stucco duplex with mud-colored walls and ornate iron bars over all the windows. A long driveway led to the garage in back, but after a brief scan of the street John was able to confirm Philip’s statement that there was nothing that looked like an unmarked car waiting for them outside.
Next John instructed Patsy to head over to Pacific Beach, to a run-down motel where he and some old buddies once rented a room for a weekend when they were fresh out of boot camp. They had spent the weekend chugging Coors while they discussed the prospect of going surfing, which none of them actually knew how to do. Patsy didn’t protest when he asked her to go inside and use cash to get a room. She came back with the room number, and John handed her a sheet of paper and told her to take dictation.
Ten minutes later, when Patsy returned from the room she had paid for, John called Philip back. He answered after the first ring, and John gave him the name and address of the hotel and the room number. He hung up just as Philip went to ask another question. Once this series of steps was completed, he started to breathe easier.
At exactly the moment he said he would, thirty minutes from their last phone call, Philip pulled into the motel’s parking lot. He was driving a white Ford Escape with all sorts of gay bumper stickers on the rear bumper. Patsy watched him as he went for the room, and John watched out the back of the camper shell to see if Philip had been followed. Traffic on the avenue continued to flow, nothing slowing or stopping or turning to follow Philip into the motel parking lot. A minivan with kids in the backseat turned into the Carl’s Jr. across the street, but that was it.
“He just went in,” Patsy said as John continued his survey.
Now that he was inside the room, hopefully Philip had picked up the note that Patsy had left for him on one of the bed pillows. Hopefully he was reading John’s instructions to get on the 5 and head south for Border Field State Beach, a relatively desolate expanse of coastal chaparral and angry coastline right next to the Mexican border. He was to look for any car that might be tailing him by switching lanes every so often. A following car that was willing to switch to the right lane with him but not back to the left was probably a tail; tails instinctively hated changing lanes into their blind spot and would fall back before doing so. If he saw a tail, he was to call the number for the cell phone John had given him. If not, he was to call when he reached the entrance to the park. And last, he was to wad up the note in one hand and carry it with him to his car to indicate compliance.
Fifteen minutes after he entered the motel room, that’s exactly what Philip did. He even raised the wadded-up note in one hand, as if he were waving good-bye to someone he didn’t care to look at. Then he got behind the wheel of his car and headed for the 5. They followed.
“Tell me we’re not trying to win the sympathy of the border patrol here,” Patsy finally said.
“If we stay far enough north of the border, we should be good,” John said. And the truth was he needed open space to make sure Philip wasn’t being tailed, and he couldn’t think of another beach nearby that wouldn’t be crawling with surfers on this bright, sunny day. Only the bravest dared enter the treacherous waters off Border Field, a watery graveyard to hundred of immigrants foolish enough to try that doomed crossing. But maybe the choice had been prophetic, because if he failed in what he wanted to do, he might have to cross that border to avoid the consequences.
Philip called when he reached the entrance to the park, then made a disgusted sound in his throat when he saw the Tacoma pull up right behind him and realized he had been followed the entire time. John leaped out of the back of the camper shell, phone pressed to his ear, and ordered Philip to unlock his passenger-side door. As soon as he shut the passenger-side door of the Escape, Patsy backed up enough so she could pull a U-turn, then headed out of the park, past the chaparral expanses on either side of Dairy Mart Road, and in the direction of the waiting spot they had picked out in the run-down residential blocks just south of the 5.
Without being distracted by the sight of his new chauffeur, John ordered Philip to drive deeper into the park. Philip kept his mouth shut and followed orders, and soon the whitecap-strewn deep blue of the Pacific appeared ahead. John had been right; all that awaited them was an empty expanse of windblown sand and angry whitecaps. They were a good distance from the border fence that jutted into the ocean, looking pathetically frail given its auspicious purpose.
He told Philip to stop. The guy’s eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like he had shed a few pounds since John had last seen him. But he was freshly showered, his hair a wet pile on his head, and was giving off the scent of lotion that smelled like the stench someone might get from dousing roses in pineapple juice.
“What happened to your arm?” Philip asked.
“Let’s get out. I’ve got a better view that way.”
“Don’t you want to stay hidden?” Philip said.
“I do, but I need to see if anyone’s coming.”
“And if someone is?”
“Then you’re going to drive this thing straight for the border fence while I head in the other direction.”
Philip glared at him. “And why would I do that?”
“Because the alternative is Alex spends the rest of his life in jail for murder.”
Philip stepped out of the car. John followed suit, walking slowly around the nose of the SUV until his back was to the roaring ocean, and Philip was backed up against the grille, arms folded over his chest, refusing to look in John’s eyes, like a defiant child.
“Where is he?” Philip finally asked.
“I was hoping you could help me with that. I need to know if he has any other friends he would run to—”
“Why did he run?” Philip snapped. “If you were protecting him, why did he run from you?”
“Because I think somebody called him and told him what had been done to Mike’s body and it sent him into a state of rage. And now he’s out there with my gun, which apparently he already knows how to fire. Do you know who taught him to fire a gun, Philip?”
“Well, I sure as hell didn’t call him. As for teaching him to shoot, my guess would be the other Marine in his life. They were two fag boys livin
g in the middle of Hicksville. I imagine it was a skill he needed.”
“You use that word a lot more often than I do,” John said.
“Which one? Fag? You barely know me, so it’s not like you’ve had time to count.” They were circling the source of anger between them and getting nowhere fast, so John decided to plow right in.
“The police kept you all night? You must have given them quite a story.”
“I didn’t tell them a damn thing you told me. I just told them that you came to the club looking for Alex. I told them that you and Alex had had some sort of fight and you didn’t make it clear what it was about. I told them that you two left together. I was just confirming what they already knew. They questioned everyone at the club.”
“How did they get to the club in the first place?”
“The same way you did. They knew Alex used to work there.”
“Is that all you told them?”
Philip exhaled loudly, tongued his upper lip briefly, and crossed his arms more tightly against his chest. “I told them Alex always had a thing for Marines—butch, straight-acting Marines like yourself. I thought it was better to let them believe you guys were fucking than to tell them what you told me. Then they started asking me questions about Alex’s history. Other men he had dated. Where he might be. The same questions you’re about to ask me, it sounds like.”
John couldn’t avoid the contempt Philip had for him; it was as naked as Alex’s anger toward him during that first phone call, before Alex had believed Mike to be dead. True, he had never made much of an effort to prove himself to Philip, and that would probably be impossible now, given that Alex had fled his protection and given that the resentment radiating off Philip’s very being seemed ingrained. But it struck John as pathetic, full of defeat, or, at least, the perception of it, as if Philip believed John had already beaten him to a pulp and the only recourse he had was to pop off some nasty remarks about it. Could Philip not see that John was the one with the broken arm, the one who stank of auto grease?
“They asked you about other people in Alex’s life?” John asked.
“Yes. I told them there hadn’t been any other men in Alex’s life for the past three years because he gave his entire life to Mike. Even when Mike was in Iraq, there was no one else. No one. And I told them that Alex was not capable of murder. On any level!”
“And me? Did they ask about me?”
“Of course they did, and I said I didn’t know you at all.” It sounded like an insult. John turned away, scanned the beach and the distant fence, the expanse of wind-whipped chaparral leading off in the direction from which they had come.
“Alex isn’t capable of killing anyone,” Philip said, as if John’s silence had begged the question. John stayed silent, didn’t mention the reenactment the day before, replete with smashed beer bottles and a lead pipe. “The only reason he went with you was to prove his manhood. That’s all. Shit, after all the time they spent together, Alex got as caught up in that macho Marine Corps bullshit as Mike was.”
“How did I get such a big role in his life?”
“For Christ’s sake, you were practically the other man. He lost his shit when Mike asked if he could invite you up to the house.”
“What? He thought Mike and I would run off together?”
“No. He thought you had power. The power to make Mike pretend he was straight again, even if it meant kicking Alex to the curb. It’s not like it would have been the first time he’d been thrown out. His parents did the same thing when they found out he was a fag. They stopped paying his tuition, cut him out of their life insurance policy.” They had also left him a luxurious cabin in the mountains for him and his boyfriend to play around in, but mentioning this wasn’t about to get Philip on his side. “So, in walks this big, hot Marine, and Alex just gives him his entire life. He gave up on everything else.”
“He said he made a decision,” John said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Most people call it a commitment,” John fired back. “Now, I’m sorry he didn’t make it to you, but maybe if you care about him enough to get over it, you’ll start telling me where the fuck he could have gone!”
This outburst stilled Philip. At first John thought the guy had been mortified by his anger. Then in a gentle voice Philip said, “A commitment, huh? Pretty soon you’ll be calling it a marriage. You’ve come a long way in a short time, John Houck.”
“Maybe not such a long way. You saw what they’re saying about me on the news.”
“They’re not saying it.”
“They’re implying it.”
“True,” Philip said. Then, after studying John for a few tense seconds, he said, “I don’t know where he could have gone, John. That’s the truth. I’ve told you all I know. Christ, I’ve told you all I want to know.”
Philip dropped him off at the entrance to the park and he walked the few blocks to where Patsy was waiting for him on a wide street, lined with one-story tract homes, that had an expansive view of the roaring freeway. After he finished telling her his new plan, she let her hands slip from the steering wheel and into her lap and gazed out the windshield as if she had just been given a terminal diagnosis.
“She’s probably got reporters all over her house,” she said.
“I doubt she invited them inside. And that will just make her place easier to find.”
“You’re a bigger part of the story than she is. How do you plan on getting through them?”
“I’ll get her to meet with me.”
“I have money, John.” She let this hang in the air between them, and then looked away from him nervously. “We can turn ourselves in, hire us a good lawyer—”
“And where does that leave Alex?”
“Wherever the hell he chooses to be. That’s where it leaves him.”
“Tell me you didn’t come with me just so you could convince me to give up.”
“All right, let’s say you get to his mother. She’ll turn you in—”
“Not if I tell her I know where her son is, and I’ll only tell her if she doesn’t call the police on me.”
“Right. A son she doesn’t care about—”
“Then why is she using phrases like ‘my only son’ and ‘he left my life’? Alex wanted me to think she was a bitch because there’s a story there and he didn’t want me to know the other side of it.”
“So there’s a story there. Fine. How’s that going to help you find him?”
“Because Philip stood out on that beach and told me that Alex has no friends, no people in his life other than Philip. I think that means something happened in Cathedral Beach, and it was bigger than Alex coming out of the closet. I think it involved people in Alex’s life that Philip never knew about.”
“And you think one of them is hiding him?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But the other option is we try to shadow Duncan until Alex shows up with my gun. So why don’t you take your pick?”
After a few seconds, she started the engine. “We should wait until dark. I’ll find someplace we can stay parked until then. It’s supposed to rain tonight, too, but I guess it’s not the time to shop for a cute umbrella.”
John said, “Get me a good raincoat and we’ll call it even.”
Two news vans sat parked across the street from a salmon-colored mansion with a peaked, red-tiled roof visible above the fifteen-foot stone walls that bordered the front of the property. Palm trees the size of small high-rises sprang up on the other side of the walls. John thought they looked like a piss-poor attempt to distract from the fact that the house was built like a fortress, like they were intended to suggest there was a tropical paradise on the other side. But apparently it looked great on film because two different reporters addressed their camera crews with the pink palace as their backdrop. They wore brightly colored raincoats and stood under the cover of jerry-rigged tarps.
John’s heart skipped a beat as he realized they were reporting on him. B
ut then he was able to stabilize it with deep breaths. Patsy didn’t seem to be having any such luck. From where he lay, stuffed into his large raincoat, his cast already plastic-wrapped, he could see her through the open back window. Her baseball cap was shoved down over her head but she was glancing every which way, as if trying to determine which direction each raindrop was coming from.
Patsy pulled off onto a side street lined with a hodgepodge of Cape Cod–style cottages, Spanish mission revivals, and Victorians. Vine-laced white picket fences ran next door to wrought-iron gates, as if every kind of rich person’s architecture in the world had come to Cathedral Beach to retire.
The number he had for Charlotte came from information, and he was confident she wasn’t going to answer it herself. It was a pretentiously accented male voice on the answering machine, probably a butler or assistant, unless Charlotte had gotten remarried without Alex or anyone in the news media finding out about it. Butler it was, John realized, when the message finished with, “Mrs. Martin asks that in light of recent events, the news media respect her privacy. Public comments will be made only at the appropriate times and the media will be well advised beforehand. Thank you and good day.”
After the beep John said, “Your son hasn’t killed anyone but he will if I don’t stop him. Only you can help me do that.” He gave her the number for the phone and hung up.
Blind Fall Page 19
