by John Decure
“Hell-oh-oh,” she said like one might before entering a pitch-black cave. As if we were holding our breaths for her arrival. “I’m hee-ere.” I was instantly annoyed by her self-centeredness.
“This Las Palomas? The judge says Scotty—he’s my soul mate—ought to take parenting, even though he’s not Bianca’s real dad.” She turned to look behind her. “Goddam it, what is with him? Scotty, come on in!” she shouted as if Scotty were a terrier who’d slipped free from his leash, but Scotty didn’t show his face. Good boy, Scotty, I said to myself.
“I’ll be just a moment,” Carmen told her. “Why don’t you just relax outside. I’ll come and get you.”
“I’m kinda in a hurry,” the woman said. I stood up and smiled thinly, glad that for once, this one was not my client. The twice-cursed baby Bianca eyed me disdainfully. I clipped the door shut just inches from the useless wheel of her secondhand ride.
“This place really gets to you,” Carmen said.
“Just sometimes. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be interrupted right now.”
She gathered the letters. “I’ll take them home and start tonight. You don’t have to pay me.”
I swallowed hard and summoned a lick of courage. “Maybe I can do something for you. Are you doing anything Friday evening?”
“I have to watch my brother. I live with him and my mother. She’s going out Friday.”
“What about Saturday?”
“I’m taking him out Saturday.”
“Oh.”
“Are you asking me on a date?” she said, so calmly I was instantly worried that I might be making an ass of myself.
“I guess I am. But I want to thank you, too, for translating the letters.” Shit. I was about as smooth as the ride on that kid’s pieceof-shit baby carriage.
“Saturday would’ve been good,” she said. “But Albert doesn’t get out often enough. Mami’s getting old. She doesn’t have the energy to keep up with him anymore. He’s usually bored with the things I plan. Wants to do “guy” things.”
“What do you two like to do together?”
“We go to movies, but he usually falls asleep before the story gets going. It’s hard finding anything suitable anyway.”
“There aren’t many good movies for kids any more.”
“He’s not a kid,” she said, “but you’re right. Albert’s twenty-four. He’s mentally slow.”
“What are you two doing Saturday?”
“Probably bowling. He likes to bowl.” She wrinkled her nose at the thought. “We bowl too much. I’m tired of sitting in that dank, smelly alley when outside the sky’s blue and the sun’s shining. He needs to be outdoors more.”
I had an idea that seemed perfectly natural.
“Can Albert swim?”
“He’s a good swimmer,” she said. “Four summers of lessons at the Y”
“Does he like the beach?”
“He does, but he’s a handful.”
“How much does he weigh?”
“About one-fifty, I think. I don’t know for sure. Why?”
I glanced briefly over her well-proportioned frame. “And you’re somewhere between one-ten and one-twenty.”
“Aah, an estimate,” she said, “very diplomatic.” Our eyes had begun a flirtation. “Why do you ask?”
“Your boards would need enough flotation. You catch more waves that way.”
“You want to take us surfing?”
“That’s the concept. What do you think?”
“I’ve never done it,” she said. “I don’t know . . . I mean, about Albert.”
“You said he’s a good swimmer. Don’t worry, he’ll be safe, and it’ll spring you both from the lanes. He’ll have a gas.”
Her brown eyes fixed on mine. “He will?”
“I promise.”
The woman in the air filter shirt pulled open the door without knocking. “Scotty’s back,” she said, as if that alone was reason enough for me to clear the hell out.
I sighed. “Marvelous.”
Carmen invited me to hang a few minutes until she closed for the day, and I did. We set a time for Saturday morning and exchanged phone numbers, and I promised to call her Friday evening with directions to my place. I walked her from the courthouse out into the four-level, which, by this hour, was all but empty. We found her car, a well-maintained, midnight blue ’72 Chevy Malibu, parked in the space next to my dusty Jeep wagon. We both had a laugh about this little coincidence, but I knew Marielena Shepard would have disagreed with our assessment.
A sign, she would have said.
The County Recorders Office in Norwalk is full of map books bearing the legal descriptions of every square foot of property in the region, but if you don’t know the basic coordinates of the parcel you’re looking for, you’re in trouble. My problem was that the Sea Pointe brochures had been vague as to the exact location of the homesites. I knew the lots were somewhere north of Pacific Coast Highway and west of Christianitos Boulevard, amongst the muddy sea grass and eroded bluffs of the Back Bay. But I had no real map, and the brochures themselves were gone.
“Try your town’s City Hall,” the desk clerk said as they dimmed the lights to give warning that they were closing up. “Most smaller towns like Christianitos have historians. Yours might.”
Why hadn’t I thought of that? I’d floated down here on a cloud of good karma after saying good-bye to Carmen. My mind was addled with a new sense of possibility, but my hopes swam upcurrent against an instinct to flee to the familiar safety of loneliness.
I found a pay phone and called City Hall. They closed at five, but yes, they had a historian, Charles Baumann, and yes, he was in. When Baumann came on the line I begged him to stay a little late and made up a fairly elaborate lie to seal his agreement. I told him I was a lawyer representing an elderly client—“Confidential” I said when he asked for a name—who needed specific information about certain properties so that they could be properly accounted for in a will.
“Don’t you have the deeds?” he asked.
“Well, yes,” I said, “but the land is undeveloped. My client is getting on in years and can’t recall which parcels are which. His wishes are that certain land go to some heirs as opposed to others.”
“I get it,” Baumann said. “Stickin’ it to ’em, eh?”
“My client is very ill,” I said. “Dying. Can you wait for me?” Christ, where did I come up with this garbage?
“Just get here as soon as you can,” he said. “I have some work to finish up anyway.”
I sailed south down the 605 freeway in twenty minutes, a remarkable feat considering the commuter push this time of day.
Thankfully, the Christianitos City Hall building stood only half-hidden behind the public library, for it offered the clumsiest of paeans to the boxy Bauhaus school of architecture. The parking lot was tiny and looked full, so I parked on the street and walked up. I knocked at the entrance until Charles Baumann rattled some keys and let me in. He was probably in his late sixties with a tanned, jowly face and thin gray hair. We shook hands and I followed him back behind a long counter to a small wooden desk, where he pulled up an extra chair for me. He wore a short-sleeved green plaid shirt, olive slacks and clean, white leather tennis shoes. Definitely retired. I imagined he acted as the town historian on an unpaid basis.
I told him about the Sea Pointe brochures.
“Sounds like one of those Back Bay projects that never got off the ground,” he said.
“Do you recall anything about Sea Pointe?”
“Not off the top of my head.” He wordlessly invited me to explain.
I tried to piece together another blithe lie to add to the line I’d already fed him. “There may be an issue—a dispute, that is—over ownership within the family.” Damn, that sounded weak.
“I see. What about this Provencal Limited you mentioned?” he said. I’d remembered the name on the back flap of the brochures. “Somebody owned that. Why don’t you ask your client abou
t that?”
“His memory’s failing him. That’s why I’ve got to work fast.” I was sounding a little too shady, now. “You know, to protect his interests.”
“Uh-huh.” Charles Baumann cocked one eye at me.
I was tired of trying to keep pace with this rapidly escalating line of bullshit. “Look,” I said, leveling with him, “I’m sorry I made you wait for me, but I’m not into anything illegal here, I swear. I just need to find out what I can about Sea Pointe. Can you help me? Anything you might know, any idea you might have about how I could learn more about it.”
Baumann thought about it for a minute. “I suppose we could start by searching the business licenses. This Provencal outfit had to have one to sell land here in town.”
“Good,” I said. “What can I do?”
“Tell me, how old were the brochures?”
“Nineteen seventy-nine, I think.”
“I’ll have to do the search myself. All the records from the seventies are in archives. Don’t have ’em on microfiche yet. I’m workin’ on it,” he said, chuckling, “but they don’t pay me to work fast.”
“How long will it take?”
“A few days, at least. But not this week. I don’t come in Fridays,” he said. “Golf day. I’ll know something by midweek. I’m in all afternoon. Food bank. Try me, oh, say around Tuesday or Wednesday. I’ll see what I can hunt up.”
“Much appreciated,” I said. I gave him a card. “You find out anything sooner, you can call me collect, if you like.”
He took the card. “Fair enough.”
Charles Baumann walked me to the glass double doors. We shook hands and I thanked him again. “Sea Pointe,” he said in reflection. “You know, I think a neighborhood called Sea Pointe went in around ‘seventy-nine or ’eighty, but it wasn’t Sea Pointe when they finished it. Something else.”
“They changed the name?”
“Think so. How ’bout the one just east of the power plant channel, you know, up First on the far side of PCH.”
“That’s ‘The Bluffs’.”
“Not the one I was thinking of.” He clicked his tongue. “Sorry.”
“Thanks. I’ll catch you next week.”
“Sure thing. So tell me,” he said, hobbling toward an electric cart which, come to think of it, I’d probably seen parked in this lot a thousand times before. “There isn’t any will, is there?”
“No,” I conceded. “There’s no client, either. I’m looking for someone who’s missing, and . . .” My voice skipped. “She may have deserted me a long time ago.”
He stopped walking. “Sure you really want to find her?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m sure.”
“Say Mr. Shepard,” he called to me before I was across the blacktop, “what kind of law do you practice?”
Had Baumann been tuning into Channel Six lately? Was he mocking me? The prospect of losing such a highly publicized battle rattled through me again. I thought of my father, the commitment he’d applied to his shaping and big-wave riding. No holding back. Or so I’d been told.
“I’m a kiddie lawyer,” I said, “the best in town.”
The sidewalk leading back to my car was adorned with chalked-in hopscotch squares and assorted arrow-pierced hearts bearing declarations of adolescent longing: R. L. + K. H.; T. T. + M. P. 4ever. But the yards and sidewalks on both sides of the street were abandoned. Five or six houses down, at the corner of Fifth and Edison, a cascade of sprinklers fanned a carpet of lawn. Through the mist I caught sight of a guy on a red beach cruiser turning tail as if he didn’t want me to spot him. The spray obscured my view, but the bicycle’s color was the same candy-apple red of the cruiser I kept in the garage. I ran to my car.
It could have been a neighbor kid—or Jackie. If it was him, he couldn’t have known what I was doing with Baumann. My secret was still safe. But then, Jackie would be back to sweet talk Baumann about the purpose of my visit. He would know soon enough.
But I didn’t see the man on the bike as I drove, and every light I hit through town seemed to turn red as I approached. I stared up at the signal at Edison and Main, waiting on green with a purpose of mind that bordered on the paranoid.
When I unlocked the garage door and pulled in, my bike was there in back, just where it had been when I backed out of the garage this morning. A shaft of late-afternoon sun shot through the window above the workbench and sparkled on the spokes and handlebars. Max barked from the other side of the back door until I opened it and let him rush me. Across the small yard, the house appeared closed up and quiet.
The handlebars were warm to the touch, as were the front tire and the seat, but they were also standing in direct sunlight. The back tire was fully shaded by the workbench’s table edge. The knobby tread felt equally warm—or so I thought. Perhaps the bike had just been used to follow me. But then, how could Jackie beat me back here without me spying him, then disappear? It wasn’t possible.
But I’d seen him! Or had I?
An inner voice gave me counsel. You’re losing your grip, J., just maintain. Derangement is a slippery slope. Trust no one, if you must, but don’t waver.
I squatted before the cruiser and patted Max on the head, one hand still caressing the knobby bike tire. Considering the possibilities. Hoping against hope that some sort of answer would find its way to me.
Twelve
I dialed the adoption broker Lois Nettleson’s office from one of the pay phones down the hall from Foley’s courtroom. A young female took the call. “Nettleson Family Consulting,” she said.
The girl paused briefly after I identified myself. I imagined she was checking a list that said “Calls to dump” and quickly found my name at the top.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “but Ms. Nettleson isn’t available to take your call.”
“Will she be in today? I really need to speak to her.”
“I’m sorry, sir. She’s not available to see you either.” She exuded the same glib pleasantness you get from kids at fast food windows everywhere.
Unsure about a plan B, I hung up.
This day, Wednesday, was the day to see Lois Nettleson. My calendar was mercifully light. I’d started with two review hearings, both of them no-brainers. For once, the other lawyers and I agreed with the social workers’ reports; “submitted” we took turns saying when Foley asked each of us for argument. In keeping with his standard lickety-split morning routine, Foley offered no eye contact from the bench. But I could tell he was pleased.
By 9:15 I had only one task remaining, a 10 A.M. mediation on a molest in which I represented Minor One, the victim, and Ken Jorgensen, the rotund panel lawyer, had daddy diddler. Watching Ken work in the morning is typically about as fast paced as charting the early spring melting patterns of Arctic glaciers. He unfolds his paper. He reads his paper. He goes downstairs for coffee. He buys a fruit pie. He comes back upstairs. He eats his fruit pie. The filling drips onto the sleeve of his jacket. He waits until he thinks no one’s looking, then licks it off. A client approaches him seeking clarification about one of Foley’s orders, but Ken has no time—he forgot to buy coffee. He heads downstairs again.
But Ken was hustling today. His diddling client was claiming he wasn’t the kid’s natural father and screaming for a paternity test, and Ken was buying it. It was a sublimely ridiculous ploy. Father had a common-law marriage to Mother, had lived with her for a dozen years, and both he and the sorry lad sported the same weak chin and close-set brown eyes. Foley gave Ken the major stink-eye when Ken asked for the test and a continuance to wait for the results, but he could do little else than grumble and cancel the mediation, putting the matter over until October. To Foley’s chagrin I voiced no opposition. But how could I? Ken’s absurd contention had sprung me from court hours early, freeing me to concentrate on working the Randall case. Ken nearly fell off his chair when, as I packed up my briefcase to go, I rather spontaneously patted him on the back and thanked him for continuing the case. His round face
hardened into a stare and his double neck inflated like a pink balloon as he craned over his shoulder and clawed at his back.
“You stick something on my jacket?” he said.
“Come on, buddy.” I smiled, recalling an afternoon in late July when Ken majestically rose from the chair next to mine to argue his case, a “Preferred Service” sticker from Christianitos Mobil plastered to his outsized fanny. “I would never.”
I dialed Lois Nettleson’s office again. This time I lowered my voice and tried to affect a nervous stammer. This time I told the perky young girl I was a would-be dad who wanted to check out his options on relinquishing a white baby for adoption. She put me on hold to check Lois’s schedule while a string section played a soaring version of “We’ve Only Just Begun.” A few bars later I was warmly invited to stop by the office in two hours for a free consultation with Lois.
The drive north from L.A. to Santa Barbara on the 101 is mostly a bore. A long string of generic, newish suburbs hacked into the sides of rolling brown hills, fast-food chains and gleaming car dealerships eating away at gentle ranchlands. An alley of garish billboards pitching you between every turnoff. You don’t catch an ocean breeze or glimpse any blue for a long, long while. Then the road slides down out of the hills into the Oxnard valley, running through a hodgepodge of strawberry patches, equipment rental yards and outlet malls. More new developments, more of the same mindless blight.
I passed the California Street offramp in downtown Ventura, and Fairgrounds, a popular all-around surf spot that can handle a lot of kids and longboarders. The parking lot lining the break looked quiet—a rare flat day.
The freeway traffic slowed. The right lane was clogged by laboring big-rigs and, behind them, a procession of hulking motor homes driven by retirees. I passed carefully on the left, watching the Fairgrounds recede in my rearview mirror. A silver Lincoln Continental hovered a dozen car-lengths behind me.
