by Paul Bishop
“There’s a group of other people who are going to decide what happens to Unicorn.” There’s always a group of people who make the tough decisions. “We have to make them understand why you took Unicorn, why you needed to protect her. But, what’s important right now is we find Gerrard.”
“No! Not find, never find.” The music was now harsh and staccato.
I’d hit a hot button and would have to let it go for now, come at it from another angle.
Benny strummed his guitar hard. “Poor little boy all alone, fiddled with and touched, just like Conner. Never going back, never happen again.”
“You made sure of that, didn’t you, Changeling? You stopped the man who did it in order to stop him from molesting anyone else, just like you stopped the man who was touching you, so you could protect Chad.”
More harsh angry melodies flowed from his hands and through the guitar. “Every night he came, never leaving me alone. I sung with the fairies while he pinched me…and touched me…and had his way. The fairies took Conner away, left a changeling in his place.” His voice rose with his anger, the colors of his words mixing and twisting to his music. “The changeling knew, Chad was next. The man was laughing like a clown. Didn’t laugh so much when I ran him down.” It was all a mix, part melodic, part rap, part pure pain.
“And you had to run down another bad man, to protect Gerrard.”
Myron suddenly spoke up. “Perhaps he shouldn’t answer that…”
Benny swung to one side in his chair so he could see Myron, and then he sung. “Brother, brother, brother, you were always kind to me. Let me tell the story like the ones you read to me.” Benny’s voice was now light and ethereal, the colors of the word streamers golden – love.
Benny swung back to me, his face doing another rapid change and his playing more strident.
“I saw him through the window, and I listened to him, too. Another wicked touch and pincher. Changeling take the baby to the fairies. Never harm no more.”
“What about Sophie?” I asked. “Is she wicked?”
Benny slowed his playing, seeming to calm, seeming to think about my question.
“She loves Gerrard. She is his mother. She is worried…misses him,” I said.
Benny continued to strum his guitar slowly and softly, but he said or sung nothing.
I continued working the theme. “I can’t imagine how hard it was for you knowing what was happening to Gerrard and not being able to do anything about it.”
Strum, strum, strum…
“Then your videos took off and Smack Daddy promised you lots and lots of money. Money you could use to help Gerrard.”
Benny played several strident chords under his singing words, “He promised. He promised. Money, money, money. He promised the world and delivered only pain.”
“And he was mean to Unicorn.” I said.
Benny’s playing changed again, now lilting and soft. “So pretty, so fun. He was the ugly one. He would have started touching, would have started pinching, but the fairies wouldn’t let him, told me what to do. Izzy and Abi would take care. Love her and protect her, even if I wasn’t there.”
Izzy must be Benny’s name for Isaac.
“So when you got your money, you knew you could rescue both Unicorn and Gerrard.” I said, working on finding that socially acceptable way for Benny to tell the truth.
I had to be careful, dance around the money issue. Pagan and I were the only official sources who knew where the money came from. Smack Daddy knew, but he was in no position to prove the money was his. It had all been gathered under the table and off the books.
There was no argument Benny’s song streaming revenue provided the cash, nothing to say it wasn’t rightfully his. Pagan and I believed there might be a better way for the money to be used than to haul Smack Daddy’s butt out of the gator swamp he’d made for himself. Still, we had to play things very close.
Strum, strum, strum…
“All you wanted to do was protect the children,” I said, keeping my monologue rolling, keeping to my theme. “And you have protected them. Jack Martin is dead. Harvey Martin is dead. Changeling ran them down, made sure they wouldn’t hurt children again.”
Tears welled in Benny’s eyes, trickled down his cheeks, mucus covered his upper lip.
Strum, strum, strum…strum, strum, strum…
I was getting there, making progress. Had to keep at it.
“Gerrard is safe,” I said. “We will do everything we can to keep him safe, but we’ll need Sophie’s help to do it. She loves Gerrard. She wants to keep him safe. You helped her. You helped Chad. They aren’t like the men who touch and pinch. They love you. They love Gerrard. They will help us keep him safe.” I just kept talking. Benny kept strumming slowly and softly.
“There are a lot of people, good people, who will make sure Unicorn is safe, that nobody touches or pinches her. You made sure we knew Unicorn was in danger. You saved her.”
“Not ugly…Beautiful…” Benny’s words were soft, spoken over the notes from the guitar instead of sung.
“You had to do a bad thing to stop a worse thing from happening, didn’t you?” I reached out and placed my hand in a comforting manner on Benny’s knee. “You had to run them down to stop them, didn’t you?”
Benny’s hands dropped from the guitar. “Yes…” The word was spoken, not sung.
“Would you let Myron tell us about the trust, about Gerrard?”
“Yes.”
“Is it okay if Sophie knows?”
“Yes.”
There it was in glorious Technicolor…Truth.
Chapter 34
“When you tell a lie,
it becomes part of your future.
When you tell the truth,
it becomes part of your past.”
- Skip Rogers, Reading Between the Lines
The rest of the interrogation was enlightening, but uneventful. Benny was primed to talk. He spoke about both hit and runs, his intentions to kill Jack and Harvey Martin as the only way he had to stop them from molesting again and again.
He told me about getting his money from Smack Daddy – a subject I did not let him get specific about. He told me about hiding and watching Harvey Martin molest Gerrard with the same anger and frustration, the same pinching and violent touching Jack Martin had used on him.
Benny related how once he knew Smack Daddy had gathered the money Benny believed was owed to him, he planted the listening devices at both residences in order to eavesdrop and figure out what the best time would be to rescue both children. I had carefully led Benny through this part of his explanation. I wanted to make sure it didn’t appear as if Benny had stolen the five million dollars, but had only taken money owed to him.
Benny then re-counted how he used the mortuary pickup truck on the night he rescued – the softer word for kidnapped – Unicorn and Gerrard and bringing them to Isaac and Abi and Myron.
Benny was exhausted by this time so Myron filled in the rest. He related how Benny had turned up at the mortuary with the money and the children, and his asking Isaac and Abi to care for Unicorn as they had cared for him.
Gerrard was a different story. Gerrard needed specialized care, and fast. Myron wrote a trust incorporating the money Benny earned from royalties and placed Gerrard in a private care facility with the money being managed to pay for his care in perpetuity. Myron then quickly filed the trust to protect what Benny had been trying achieve.
Bad things being done for good reasons.
Depending on how you sliced the ethical pie, it was slightly different than doing bad things for bad reasons.
Pagan was very busy during all of this. It was clear Benny would be booked and charged, but he wouldn’t survive in a holding cell.
Despite possibly giving a defense attorney a built-in diminished capacity defense, Pagan twisted the arms of not only the DA Peter Simmons but also of anyone else who objected, in order for Benny to be held at a private lockdown mental facility. The man
was a superstar when it came to getting his way. I had no doubt Pagan would personally make sure Benny was kept safe. So would I.
All the brass, captains and above, who needed to make themselves seen, had checked in. They tried to assert their authority, were made to think they had, and then were ignored when the chief arrived and told them all to butt out.
It became mine and Pagan’s call. The chief had asked us to do a job, we’d done it, and done it fast. He would revel in handling the press while letting us get on with clearing up all the loose ends.
Livia Nelson and Johnny Hawkins took care of reuniting Unicorn with her mother. Smack Daddy was served with a restraining order keeping him away from the house and Unicorn until the Department of Children’s Services could make an assessment. I had no doubt Pagan had wolves in the LAPD’s Child Abuse section of Juvenile Division who would make sure the Department of Children’s Services took care of business properly.
Castano and Dodd handled all the paperwork.
Being relieved of those duties made all of this a stressful, but ultimately, a pretty great gig.
However, you’re only as good as your last case. I knew the next call out could be a disaster, but I also knew it wouldn’t be a calamity – even though I was going to wear my moniker proudly from now on.
At the end of the day, Pagan looked at me and said the three sweetest words I’ve ever heard, “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
“Lying is the most fun a woman can have
without taking her clothes off.”
- Natalie Portman
Home.
I loved my new digs at the Hacienda. I loved everything about the Hacienda. People I already thought of as close friends were here to greet us when we return. Rose Parker was a delight, and Tanaka laughed and laughed when Pagan told him about how I’d used my cane before falling over.
“We work on balance,” Tanaka said with a smile.
It was all good. Better than good. It was wonderful.
However, it was two in the morning and I was still pacing back and forth in my loft. Even the wide open floorplan couldn’t contain me as I tried unsuccessfully to come down from the high of the case.
I looked out my window. There was a light coming out of the door of the red and gold Airstream parked below. I saw Pagan through one of the coach’s windows.
I blew out a deep breath, pulled on a sweatshirt and made my way down to the carpark. As I approached the Airstream, I could hear jazz playing on a CD, but I didn’t know enough to say who or what it was. I did know I liked it. It was rhythmic and soothing. The piano was obvious, but there was also a bass and drums in the background, and an occasional foray by a saxophone.
I moved toward the inviting sound and warm light. As I got closer, I could also smell something…chocolate.
I knocked on the open door and looked in. The space was larger than I expected, but Pagan had made the interior his own with his choices of fabrics and furnishings. There were bookshelves filled with tattered and odd sized books. There was even a fairly large flat screen TV and a shelf of various other electronics. The music I’d heard was playing softly out of surround sound speakers.
Pagan was sitting at one end of a built-in table. He was reading and had a mug of hot cocoa in front of him. There was a second mug set out next to a warming pot on the table.
He looked up at me and smiled. “Couldn’t sleep either?”
I almost dropped my head to let my hair fall forward, but remembered I was done with hiding. “You were expecting me?” I said, ruefully.
“Of course.” Pagan gestured with his hand to the clean mug and the pot of what I assumed was more cocoa. He used a remote to turn the music down low. He then picked up the pot on the table and poured into the waiting mug.
I stepped up into the coach and gratefully took the proffered offering. I sighed heavily, feeling more relaxed already.
“What’s with the Airstream?” I asked.
“Gypsy roots,” Pagan said. “Sometimes, you just have to ramble.”
“You’re a piece of work, Pagan.”
“So I’m repeatedly told.” He sat back down, relaxing into his chair.
I sipped the cocoa. It was rich and creamy. I’d expected no less.
“Who’s playing on your stereo?”
“Dave Brubeck Quartet, Complete Storyville Broadcasts.”
I must have looked blank.
Pagan shook his head in mock dismay. “We’re going to have to do something about your jazz horizons.”
“I know Linus and Lucy when I hear it.”
“Vince Guaraldi,” Pagan said.
“Who?”
Pagan shot me a look.
I laughed. I paused and then asked, “How do you do it?”
Pagan gave me a quizzical look. “Do what?”
“Keep searching for the truth when we are surrounded by lies,” I said.
“It’s what I do,” Pagan said. “What we do.”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t seem like there are a lot of happy endings. Even if we do the best we can to protect Benny, the system still has him.”
“Gerrard is safe,” Pagan said. “He’s getting professional care through the trust, and his mother can still be involved without being crushed by the responsibility.”
“But who knows how Unicorn will grow up,” I said with a shrug.
“At least we’ve given her a better shot,” Pagan said. “Or maybe it was Benny who gave her the shot.”
He sipped from his mug and pushed his book across the table toward me.
I picked it up. “The Razor’s Edge,” I said, looking at the title.
“I read it once a year. It reminds me there is no destination, only the journey.”
I put the book down and wrapped my hands around my mug of cocoa.
“Are you religious?” Pagan asked.
I sighed again. “Not so you’d notice.”
“Yes you are,” Pagan said quietly.
I looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“Lie catching is our religion. It’s what we’re here to do.”
“Lie catching is a religion?”
“It’s our religion. Ego does not exist anywhere else except in human beings. Ego surrounds intelligence like a dark veil. Intelligence is light, ego is darkness. Intelligence is fragile, ego is diamond hard. Ego tells us to survive, to become like a castle built of rock, strong and immune from outside attack – impenetrable. To remain alive we must remain in constant flow. If we become stagnant, we die even though we still draw breath.”
“Whoa,” I said. This was heavier than I had expected.
Pagan continued. “Ego won’t allow us to conceive of nothingness or accept we just end when we die. If we never end, then we must always have been. Therefore, this time, this now, is only part of the journey.”
“How does any of that make lie catching a religion?”
Pagan poured himself more cocoa. “I don’t spend a lot of time trying to look past the veil and see where we came from or where we’re going. We have no control over those states. We can only do something about the state we find ourselves in now. Lie catching is my gift. It’s your gift. It doesn’t matter where we came from. Where we’re going will take care of itself, but when we get there we’re going to have to justify what we did while we were here. Did we help others? Were we honest? Did we make the best use of our talents?”
“You really think any of this matters?”
“Only on Mondays and every other Wednesday. Ask me on a Tuesday and I’ll give you a different answer.”
“You are so full of crap,” I said with a soft laugh.
“Probably,” Pagan said. “But do you have a viable alternative?”
I raised my cocoa mug. Pagan leaned forward with his mug and we clinked in a toast.
“To the high priest of lie catching,” I said.
“And to its new priestess,” Pagan said.
And then the nonsense caught up with us an
d we fell about laughing.
Home.
A Look At Hot Pursuit:
A Calico Jack Walker / Tina Tamiko L.A.P.D. Nove
It’s 1977 and veteran L.A.P.D. cop Calico Jack Walker and his rookie partner, Tina Tamiko, are planning to make Calico’s last shift on the job something special - but plans, as they do, come apart because Walker and Tamiko are good cops no matter what the cost … even if they’re L.A. cops, in uniform, in their patrol car, on duty, and way out of their jurisdiction on the Las Vegas Strip…When a major crime is going down, good cops never hesitate…
AVAILABLE NOW ON AMAZON FROM PAUL BISHOP AND WOLFPACK PUBLISHING
About the Author
Paul Bishop is the author of fifteen novels and has written numerous scripts for episodic television and feature films. A novelist, screenwriter, and television personality, Paul is a nationally recognized behaviorist and deception detection expert.
A 35 year veteran of the LAPD, his high profile Special Assault Units produced the top crime clearance rates in the city. Twice honored as LAPD’s Detective of the Year, he currently conducts law enforcement training seminars across the country, is an adjunct professor at the University of California Channel Islands, while also focussing on numerous writing projects.
Find Paul online:
www.paulbishopbooks.com
