Daley wondered how her former BFF Bellamy was doing. Wondered if Alanis and Carrie would turn out to be good friends. Said Nick had given her the ride home and said he could do that the next day, too, because Max’s mom’s car would be in the body shop the rest of the week.
It struck me that Daley Rideout was talking to herself and her CD recorder because she really had no one else to talk to. In Daley’s mind, her “sister” was paranoid and controlling. Bellamy was hundreds of miles away and Daley had had no social media to keep in touch with her best friend. She didn’t know Alanis or Carrie well enough to confide in them. Leaving her no one but stern grown-ups and nineteen-year-old Nick Moreno with the beautiful smile and eyes that had alluringly roamed her way.
“A good time for Reggie Atlas to show up in her life again,” I said.
“Interesting you would say that.”
I’m back!
Been three weeks now and I don’t love Monarch, but Nick is turning out to be pretty cool, and Alanis and Carrie really rock and there’s this teen club I’ve heard about that’s supposed to have good music. I’ve been playing a lot. I wrote, like, three songs since we moved to Oceanside! I get true satisfication from writing songs. I’m hoping Pen gets me the Martin Backpacker I’m totally craving. Only two hundred and twenty-nine bucks. Got a birthday coming up, baby. Funniest thing, I saw Reggie Atlas and two other guys at Monarch today. He gave me a big smile and said he was there to see Chancellor Stahl about a church-sponsored endowment thingy, which I think means money. I said what a small world to see you here, and Reggie said God works in mysterious ways. We all sat for a minute in the quad, had drinks from the cafeteria, then Chancellor Stahl had another meeting and Reggie told his friends let’s go see that new athletic field and we followed them over. I know Pen hates him and I don’t know why, other than she says he’s got cancer of the soul. Must be painful. We fell behind his friends and talked. He said he had been praying for me a lot and still felt like we were ghosts flying through each other and he’d really meant it when he said we could fly together side by side in Jesus. I told him I was still waiting for that ticket and he said can you come to my new church in Encinitas, it’s not finished yet, but I’ll show it to you and you can see what a beautiful home for Jesus it’s going to be. He said he could send a car and driver for me when Penelope wasn’t home from work yet. Pen just had to think I was going to go to some usual place for a few hours—like maybe studying at a friend’s house, or to the library, or maybe practicing in the music room after school. You’re still playing your guitar and writing songs, aren’t you? I said yes, and Reggie said, okay, your sister gets home from work tomorrow at five forty-five, so you just be at the corner of Seagaze and Myers at exactly five fifteen. You know where that is, don’t you? I said duh, like I haven’t lived here for almost a month. Don’t you harassinate me, Pastor Atlas! And Reggie smiled down at me and just when I’m getting irate that he’s treating me like a child my heart reaches out to him and I say, sure okay, I’ll be there, Pastor Reggie.
Later, ’gator.
“He played guitar for me,” said Penelope. “He has a beautiful voice. And he gave me the line about ghosts flying through each other, too. I thought it was haunting when I was twelve—these two beautiful wispy spirits moving through each other but not able to stay and unite. I asked Daley if he had ever said that to her. She denied it.”
“Did he have other favorites?”
“In Jesus. Everything was in Jesus.”
“Something concrete,” I said.
“Concrete?”
“I’m fishing here, Penelope. Something physical. Something I can see. That helps me understand what he’s doing.”
“Well, there was our mansion on the sand. That was physical.”
“Tell me about that mansion.”
“I don’t remember the first time he talked about it. I must have been very young. Eight or nine. I just kind of grew up hearing about it. At first it was a magnificent house he was going to build. On a beach. Maybe in California. Maybe in Mexico. Later, he told me he was going to build a holy mansion on the sand. Over the years, it became a place for him to live in, with all his friends and dogs and cats and whatever other animals he wanted. It would be huge, with a domed roof made of blue lapis, like temples in Jerusalem. White walls, with windows trimmed in shiny red paint. And it would sit on sand the color of gold in the sunlight, next to an ocean that would be always changing, from blue to green to silver to black to blue again. There would be tall palm trees all around. There would be flowers in planters beneath every window. And balconies where he could sit and watch the sun go down. Miles of beach. Whale spouts and seabirds in formation. And horses. Of course he would have pretty horses.”
“You were impressed.”
“I was awed. Over the years, the mansion on the sand became a place for me to live, also. My beautiful home. We would live there, together. A place of peace and beautiful things and love. Love everywhere. In every room. Morning and night and all the hours in between.”
A bemused look fell over Penelope’s face, then a bitter smile. She shook her head as if to clear a thought she didn’t want.
“He said we would come together in Jesus with all of our hearts. As husband and wife. Twelve beautiful children would appear, children in His—Jesus’s—image. And our family would become the foundation of the lost tribe of Israel, the true Israel—not the Israel of the Hebrews, who are only half human—but the Israel of Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten son.”
And so I glimpsed the depth of madness inside Reggie Atlas—if this was all true. Even mostly true. If Penelope was not spinning another convincing, self-justifying fiction.
“What did you make of all that, Penelope?”
She considered, a parade of emotions playing across her face. “I was still young enough to fall for it. He was such an impressive man to a little girl. To a little girl whose parents thought the world of him, who took her to hear him preach every time he was near us. Somehow, Reggie Atlas always found ways for us to be private. Just for a minute or two. In a chapel, while the choir rehearsed. In a church office, with the door open to the hallway. In a Sunday-school classroom, on the break between services. Walking in the woods around the tent. Even with other people around, he created this privacy for two. We talked and prayed. We had special sayings. We had looks and expressions. We never touched. Until. And Reggie would always bring up what was becoming our beautiful home. Like a parent telling a child a story. I know now that he was trying to shape my thoughts and dreams. My expectations and limits. He was measuring my portions and tenderizing me. Like a butcher.”
In the wake of Penelope’s painful memories, the ceiling fan whirred and the boom box sat silent and two boys with surfboards under their arms hustled down the sidewalk outside, voices raised. In that moment, their innocence seemed the most valuable thing on earth. I thought about how the world was made up of things that are here and seen, like the surfers, and also made up of things that are here but not seen, like a man walking in the woods on a warm spring morning with a girl too young to sense his menace, while the congregation gathered in the shade of the tent, awaiting the Word. I felt some of the weight of Penelope Rideout’s past bearing down across the years, and her growing torment as she saw it gathering over her daughter. Her sister.
“What did you think when you first saw the Cathedral by the Sea?” I asked.
“Thought it was plug ugly. It’s certainly no mansion on the sand. Why?”
“I just had the thought that Reggie built that mansion. Somewhere. I can find it, but it might take time. It would depend how good he is at secrecy. How many layers between his name and the bricks and mortar.”
Another long stare from her. “For him and Daley?”
“For himself and his fantasies.”
“Why not just rent a damned mansion? See, that’s what I do.” She gestured
to the little beach rental, her hands open.
That was a very practical idea, and I said so.
A blink and a stare from her. The ever-judging, ever-assessing, ever-appraising eyes of Penelope Rideout.
“Let’s hear Daley’s second CD,” she said.
30
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I’m back!
Turns out Pastor Atlas’s Cathedral by the Sea isn’t much more than a cut-off hilltop and some cement with those spirally metal rods sticking out. You can see all the way to the ocean, though. It’s out between Encinitas and Rancho Santa Fe, I think they call it, lots of twisty roads. Anyway, Pastor Atlas didn’t send a car and driver to get me at the corner of Myers and Seagaze at EXACTLY five fifteen. No, he came himself, driving this crazy motor home, all red and silver and shiny. And down the road we went. Just us. I sat up front and it was like being a copilot in a jet. Pastor Reggie started talking about Jesus like he always does, but He’s not really my thing, Jesus isn’t, though I don’t have any problem with Him. That I know of! I tuned Sirius to this oldhead band I totally love, Huey Lewis, rather than the Four Wheels for Jesus channel, which seemed to annoy Pastor Atlas. By the way, I got the Martin Backpacker guitar from Penny for my birthday, EARLY! and I took it with me to see Reggie’s church because my story to Pen was I went with Carrie to play guitars in the music room at school with our music teacher at Monarch, Mr. Bob Dillon, that’s his real name! And so Carrie’s mom would drop me off at home and don’t worry. So I had the Backpacker in the motor home and this big window right in front of me and I was playing along with Huey Lewis and the News. Watching the world out the window was more like the world was watching me! I don’t really want to be famous, but for a minute it felt great. Everybody looking at me. Reggie trying to tell me how to play the music. Says he’s good on guitar, but I’ve never heard him play a single note.
We walked around the cathedral construction site. I met one of the security guards, Adam, and Reggie said to call Adam if I ever needed anything. Adam would handle it. I thought maybe I could tell Adam that Nick was getting more and more aggro, and maybe he could maybe get Nick to chill. Then I thought, don’t be a coward, girl, if Nick is dissing you, then get in his face yourself. Inside, he’s a sweet guy, but I frustrate him with the no-sex-until-next-year-when-I’m-fourteen thing. He’s all, what about handjobs? But I’m stubborn and have almost no interest in that with him and I don’t owe Nick anything. I carry my own weight, except he drives everywhere because I’m too young. Which in the papillon van gets us lots of laughs, but some business, too. Half of what we do I pay for, gas included. If Pen knew how much of my allowance I spend on Nick, she might not be too happy.
Pen made me promise no sex until I’m eighteen, but I renegotiated with myself in case I meet someone better than Nick. Someone who makes me feel more that way. I mean, I do feel that way, and if you judge menstruationally, then I’m all grown up. I mean, someone who makes me really, really feel that way. Like an authentic connection. Physical, yes. But a soul thing, too. Soul mates? I don’t know. Out loud it sounds so sappy and dumb.
Inside the construction trailer he showed me the drawings for his new church. We sat on a couch and he spread the plans across our laps. Arms touching. Hmm, I thought. I’d never been that close to him. The architect cost one hundred thousand dollars. It will look very modern, kind of a mash-up of glass and wood and steel with big cables connecting things. Reggie said the architecture was supposed to symbolize the fractionalized world and the cables are Jesus, holding everything together.
Gotta go now!
Penelope gave me a sickened look.
Daley played some of her songs, accompanying herself on guitar. Her voice was a soprano, bell-clear, with a girl’s sweetness in it. She didn’t hold her notes any longer than necessary, giving the lyrics a moving simplicity. The songs were grounded in the wonder of physical things: the ocean, which was new to Daley; seagulls contesting food scraps thrown by a child; the loud power of an Amtrak train rushing north from San Diego to L.A. Her guitar picking was simple and timely.
“She has talent,” I said.
“She didn’t get it from me. Reggie plays beautifully. At least, he used to. So the talent is more circumstantial evidence that he is Daley’s father. Since my eyewitness accounts are not enough.”
“I’ll plod into the truth on my own time,” I said. “That’s just the way I do things.”
She came and sat at the far end of the couch.
“Give me your hand.”
With both our arms extended, our hands met, palm to palm, hers on top.
“I want you to believe me, because what I’ve told you is true,” she said. “I want you to like me in spite of it.”
“I like you very much. You’re smart and funny and easy on the eyes. You brought me some thoughtful gifts that night. And some home nursing. It all meant something to me, Penelope. Really.”
“But you look at me like I’m a pathetic victim,” she said. “An oversexed, low-IQ girl with eyes for a preacher man.”
“No.”
“Then how, exactly, do you see me? I’ll accept nothing but the truth.”
She squeezed my hands. Stronger than I’d have thought.
“You know how to put a man on the spot.”
“We’ll sit here until you answer me.”
I imagined different answers, each true and each leading off the same cliff. “A bright young woman with a troubled heart and a tough problem to solve.”
“How craftily you avoid my past,” she said. “I need you to see it clearly. It’s who I am.”
“Only partially. Once upon a time. Which marches on.”
“Do you believe me or not?”
“I want to believe you.”
The hand squeeze again.
“But if you are proven wrong, would you still like me on a go-forward basis?”
“Okay.”
Penelope Rideout, peering at me through clouds of doubt. Then a gradual change. Subtle but apparent. A thin ray of sunlight. Another. Willpower? Hope? Acceptance?
“Hmmm. Okay? Okay.”
She let go of my hands and aimed the remote.
Daley’s voice filled the room again, no songs, but snippets from her days at Monarch, her first time at Alchemy 101, ups and downs with Nick.
Followed by ruminations on what made Penny so afraid of her own shadow, like every window in every place we ever lived had something bad waiting outside it. When I ask her why, she says don’t be silly. I think it’s probably something to do with Mom and Dad. Like everything is. When I look at pictures of them I don’t feel very much. I hope that doesn’t make me a sociopath. I remember them only a little, and unclearly. Mom was pretty and talkative. Dad was quiet. They both seemed huge. There. I just exhausted my memories of them.
Toward the end of the sixty-minute disc, Daley introduced her new song, “Mansion on the Sand.” It was brief.
Mansion on the sand
Filled with music and
Waiting for a trusting girl
To lock inside its perfect world
Jesus coming by to chat
Prayers and joy and love you say
All night and all day
Lost together forever bound
In the beauty of God’s way
You say it’s yours, take it
But why close my eyes to see
The beauty you’ve made for me?
We sat in a silence longer than the song. The sickened look came back to Penelope’s face. She wiped a tear and flicked her hand sharply and the tear shot toward the kitchen.
“Fuck, I’m tired of this,” she said. “Can’t you just go get her and bring her back? Then Daley and I can turn around and light out for the territory ahead. Move again. And move again and again, a million more times. Move for fuck
ing ever. And you won’t have to deal with me and my melodramas, or try to figure out what you think about me. I’ll get over you. We’ll send Christmas cards. I was happy running away because it was always away from him. Now I’ve stopped and tried to fight, and I’ve lost her.”
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“I know SNR Security works for him. I know you’re just one man. And you can’t go up against them alone again.”
“Roger that. Don’t lose hope.”
31
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THE trail leading to Pastor Reggie Atlas’s mansion on the sand wasn’t quite as hard to find as I thought it would be.
It took me most of the next day to pick it up through the labyrinthine IvarDuggans.com “Known Associates” and “Doing Business As” listings for Reggie Atlas and his Four Wheels for Jesus Ministry. A Mexican LLC controlled by six known Atlas associates had formed a real estate investment trust and brought shares to market on the U.S. stock exchange.
The trust was called Sand Mansion Investments, and offered shares in properties in Baja California’s burgeoning East Cape, just north of La Paz. East Cape was serviced by two good airports, one in San José del Cabo, the other in La Paz.
I knew the area. Once a loose necklace of peaceful villages strung along the Gulf of California, East Cape was rapidly developing into a land of luxury hotels, ecotourism, and tony golf resorts.
I’d even worked a case down there, locating and finally helping a careless gringa get back to the U.S. She had gotten herself into some ugly trouble, an impromptu kidnapping attempt that was both amateurish and potentially lethal. She was very happy to finally board her plane out of La Paz. So was I. As American journalist Ambrose Bierce had written to a niece more than a century ago, not long before he disappeared in Mexico, “To be a gringo in Mexico—ah, that is euthanasia.” For me, it almost was. For the gringa, too.
Studying the computer monitor in my home office, I saw that Sand Mansion Investments was a legal shell company comprising the six known associates of Reggie Atlas, but also of Ronald White, aka Reggie Atlas, and Mary Lavoy, aka Marie Knippermeir, heir to the Knippermeir Breakfast Meats fortune and wife of the hatemonger Alfred Battle.
The Last Good Guy Page 18
