by John Decure
The breeze smelled faintly of eucalyptus and ocean kelp beds. The noon street scene was still in motion, but I could see no sign of the man in the Lincoln. The scent of baked bread, white wine and ladies’ perfume carried upwind with the rising sea breeze, and I was struck by the depth of my love of California. I tossed Lois Nettleson’s card onto the dash and jerked the gearshift lever into reverse.
Thirteen
The last turnoff out of Santa Barbara on 101 South is for Bates Road in Carpenteria, and Rincon Point. The silver Lincoln had found me again and assumed its previous position three cars back, so I eased down the off-ramp and turned into the long, narrow public lot above the beach. I’d never been followed before, but I knew it didn’t agree with me. I was determined to either lose this tourist now or at least convince him to stay off my ass.
The last time I’d surfed Rincon was three or four years ago on a throbbing west swell that lasted close to a week. That day a hundred cars clogged the lot and at least as many riders trolled the point between Third Point and the inside Cove. Too much crowd, really, but God, if you hooked into a good wall you’d go forever. On that day I pumped a ruler-edged, overhead wailer all the way from Inside Third through Second and the body jam at First, then on through the Cove until the swell slapped the boulders piled beneath the freeway. I’d been out only two hours, but that wave was so flat-out fine that I had little choice but to paddle in, for I knew there was no way I could top the feeling.
But Rincon is a winter break and today, a flat day in September, the only cars parked at the head of the beach trail were a VW Thing, a dented mini-truck piled with driftwood and an old school bus hand-painted in faded out psychedelic colors. I slid into a spot behind the bus and cut the motor, wondering if the man in the Lincoln carried a gun.
The trail to the beach at Rincon is a narrow strip of hard dirt just off the freeway embankment. On the shoreward side of the path, a chain-link fence lies behind wild grass and scrub brush, separating surfers and beachgoers from the block of multi-million-dollar homes along the sand. I hustled down the head of the dirt path without looking back until the trail sharpened in its descent to the beach below. No one was ahead or behind me when I jumped behind a weedy patch of brush and hid.
He didn’t come down the path for twenty more minutes, and by the time he did, my knee joints were cramped from crouching and I needed to take a piss. The man wore navy slacks with a white knit shirt and navy loafers, a heavy gold chain around his neck. No gun. I was relieved to see that he wasn’t an oversized brute, but he appeared plenty thick in the upper body and his head looked as hard as a bowling ball. Seeing nothing below, he scowled as if I were climbing ever higher on his private shit list.
I crouched to take him and had an awful thought: this was a public beach—what if he wasn’t the guy? And what if someone saw me jump him and tried to intervene? An arrest in Santa Barbara, a hundred miles from home, would pose an assortment of problems I didn’t care to fathom at the moment. My bladder ached for some relief as I peeked down the beach path. Nothing stirred below.
He stopped not five feet from me and eyed the base of the trail. “Goddam,” he said, checking his watch and rubbing his buzz-cut hair. Deeply annoyed, perhaps, that the jack-off he was tailing had stopped off for an afternoon stroll on a lonely strip of shoreline. He reached into his breast pocket and flipped on a pair of sunglasses. I still wasn’t sure he was the man in the Lincoln. Then he reached into his front pocket, pulled out a card with some numbers written in pink, and studied it. Lois Nettleson’s business card.
I leapt from the bushes and clamped him hard from behind, driving him up to take his feet off balance. We went down with a thud in a cloud of soft dirt, my left arm pinned beneath his chest, and I lost my grip for a second. He felt my hand letting go and freed himself enough to drive an elbow into my chin, popping me back and stunning me. I clung to his shoulder blades, trying to shake off the blow as I wrapped my arms under his armpits and worked my hands up to the base of his neck.
“Bastard!” he said, panting. “Leggo me!”
Struggling in the dirt, I was thinking about movies and TV, the way fights are generally choreographed in the same cliched manner every time. The combatants always squaring off in variations of the classic boxing stance and letting fly, duking it out with a succession of big-time, jarring blows. What a fantasy.
“You’re gonna be sorry, fucker!” he said. My arms and shoulders were aflame, my head knotted, but I dug in harder.
In a street fight, you don’t punch it out toe-to-toe unless you’ve grown tired of your facial features and want to try out a new look. You don’t expose yourself to risk. You get your opponent on the ground and go for position, then wait until you can knock him out.
The wooziness inflicted by the hard elbow to my chin was passing with each second. I worked my left hand firmly behind his neck and pushed his head down into the weeds. He craned over his right shoulder and punched me with a backhanded fist, but he had no leverage and the blows rolled off my head. When he tired and stopped flailing, I freed my right hand and tagged his dome three or four times from the side.
“Aah!” he yelled, writhing. “I’ll kick your ass!” But he was weakening. I popped him again and he spit a small glob of blood into the dirt, then raised his head in one last effort to shake free. My arms and shoulders could only hold him another twenty seconds, if that. Though the trail was still deserted, I was tired of this fight and wanted to end it before someone saw us. I loosened my hold enough to make him believe he could escape. Predictably, his head shot up, but my cocked right arm was ready.
I sat him up along the fence and emptied his pockets. Car keys, a greasy comb, nicotine gum, several coins, a wallet with four crisp twenties. A driver’s license that said Donald Brill, 4313 Fremont, Los Angeles. A few business cards: Brill Investigations. Thankfully, no gun. I pocketed the keys and scooped up Lois’s card from the path.
“Aah, Christ,” he moaned, rubbing the side of his face. He fixed on me but couldn’t sit up yet on his own and clutched at the chain-link. “Fucking punk! Is this a robbery? I’ll call a cop!”
I flipped the wallet at him. “Cut the bullshit, Don.”
“You ambushed me. That’s assault and battery.”
“No witnesses,” I said, observing the empty trail, “and you were following me.” A flock of birds sang out from a nearby grove of towering eucalyptus trees. I held up Lois’s card. “Besides, you must’ve broken into my wagon to get this. You don’t look like the careful type. I’ll bet you left some prints inside. Go ahead, Don, make the call.”
He worked his jaw and tried to spit. “Knocked a tooth loose, you prick.”
“Who hired you? The Danforths? Gilbride?”
“Fuck you. My clients are confidential. You’re nobody to me, fuck.”
“Hey guy,” I said, standing over him, “You can curse all you want, but I’m not impressed. I don’t like being followed. From now on, you tell whomever you work for you lost me. I see you again, you’ll have an instant headache.”
He didn’t respond. Donald Brill was through talking. I took his car keys from my pocket and flung them down the trail and into some bushes.
I got back to my Jeep and looked around. My briefcase was resting on the back seat, exactly where I’d left it, and unlocked. Christ. Why didn’t I ever bother to use the combination lock that came with the case? The answer was pure laziness. I opened it and looked inside. A few legal pads were there, stacked neatly on top of the case files I’d handled this morning in court. My leather-bound organizer was buttoned shut. I flipped it open to the daily calendar. I’d written the address of Sue Ellen’s Silverlake neighbor, Arturo, right on today’s square. If Brill read it, he’d know where I’d be headed next.
I drove back under the freeway on the turnoff road until I spotted the Lincoln parked along the shoulder of the northbound on-ramp. Not a soul was around. My choices were limited. Trial was next week, and today was probably the only day
I’d have time to go to Sue Ellen’s old neighborhood to determine whether Gilbride had found anything damaging. Donald Brill needed to be detained.
A big truck roared by on the highway overhead. I jogged over to Brill’s car and, circling it slowly, squatted to let the air out of his tires. My bladder was burning full. The fucker creeped my car, I thought.
Quite by impulse, I unzipped my fly and took a long, relieving whiz on Donald Brill’s front grill and bumper. Then I hit it back under the freeway and tore down the L.A. on-ramp into traffic, an eye on the rearview mirror. Behind me, the rocks in the cove at Rincon baked hot in the low-tide sun.
Traffic slowed to a standstill when I hit the San Fernando Valley, so I got off on Ventura Boulevard and negotiated the eastbound signals until I came to Solley’s Deli. It was almost three and the lunch crowd was long gone. I took a big booth near the front and had a club sandwich and an iced tea. Before I left, I stopped at the pay phone outside the restrooms to call my voicemail at the office.
“You have three new messages,” the robotic female voice intoned. The first one was from a drug mom who wouldn’t test because she knew she was dirty. Our next hearing was weeks away, but she was already warming up, raving on about the constitutional rights she had coming. Excoriating me for failing, thus far, to reunite her with her baby girl—a poisoned little five-pound shell of a baby so unlucky in life it pained me to think about her. Oh sure. The woman sounded semi-stoned and forgot to leave a number, but she did remember to call me a white-ass, racist chump before she hung up. I deleted the message.
The second call was from Jackie. “J.-man,” he said in a half-whisper, “Dr. Pace checking in. Borrowed Fiona’s wheels. I’m over at the Woodside medical facility, on duty and strictly incognito. Poised to penetrate the inner sanctum.”
Vintage Jackie. Always the clown.
“Trying to get to know some of the nurses,” Jackie went on, “ones that were around when the kid was born. It’s all under control, boz, but one thing, I may need to borrow your wheels tomorrow for a repeat mission. No, two things! Need some coin, a little expense account action, you know? Lunchroom’s the place to get to know people, but I’m flat busted, mate. Looked like a barney suckin’ down an ice water in there a little while ago. Oh yeah, talked to the Pontrellis’ landlord. Real smart guy. No help. Give you the lowdown tonight. Gonna check out the good doctor’s records after they close up. Later.”
Breaking and entering: Jackie’s forte. I should’ve known it would likely come to this with him. My temples ached. What if he was caught? I’d surely be implicated. Jackie was my responsibility, taking orders from me. But then, I hadn’t told him to burglarize any offices—truth was, he was on his own. Unfortunately, this little piece of reasoning brought me no relief. My lunch bubbled deep in the pit of my stomach. I knew that by not setting any real boundaries for him, I was complicit in Jackie’s lawlessness.
The last message was from Sue Ellen Randall. Her husband Ty was out on bail now, but he was depressed and fighting with her. She felt helpless “sittin’ around not doin’ a darned thing,” so she was going back to the Silverlake neighborhood, where she and Ty had lived before she reclaimed Nathan. She thought it made sense to start with Arturo, the old man down the block, talk to him, see if she could learn more about the man who’d been out there asking questions for the Danforths. Find out whether any of the neighbors had said anything damaging.
Great. Just what I’d told Sue Ellen I would do. The message was time-stamped 3:13 P.M.—five minutes ago. I ran back to the Jeep.
The 101 freeway was still buggered, so I stuck it out in the Ventura Boulevard congestion a while longer. What the hell was Sue Ellen doing? I’d told her I’d interview Arturo, check out the neighbors. But she didn’t trust me enough to leave it to me. A kiddie lawyer, as Ty had put it, lower than even a harried public defender. It didn’t matter what she thought, I told myself. I was her lawyer, and she should have listened to me.
I slid back onto the 101 East at the place where Ventura metamorphoses into Cahuenga and bends up into the Hollywood Hills. People were leaning on their horns, veering around something in the right lane—my lane—a hundred yards up. Damn. Sue Ellen was probably at Arturo’s by now. And maybe Donald Brill, had he bothered to look in my organizer. Brill could have got his tires re-inflated by now, and if he were any good at taking alternate routes back to town, he’d be right behind me. Or up ahead.
Sue Ellen’s old street was just north of a dumpy stretch of Sunset Boulevard littered with mini-marts, auto repair shops and Mexican pescado restaurants. Weeds shot up everywhere through cracks in the sidewalks and curbs. A vagrant guarded a hijacked shopping cart brimming with recyclable cans and other junk. Half a block down the street a full-figured hooker in a busty black halter and matching tight silver shorts and knee boots strutted in circles like a Raiderette cheerleader on the Coliseum sidelines.
I parked and dug into my briefcase for the address. On the opposite corner, Sue Ellen’s former bungalow looked like Renters Hell, but the houses on the street were nicer and rather utilitarian in their neatness, most of them painted plain white with no trim, wood framed. Metal bars covered the small windows and hanging pots of bright seasonals creaked in the warm wind. Strips of yellow crabgrass stretched down to the street curbs. They were the kind of houses that, seventy-five years ago, might have cost five grand new. The kind that realtors today winkingly label as “craftsmans” or “traditionals,” “starter homes” that will start you at a mind-numbing twohundred-thousand-plus.
A large dog came to life behind a weathered picket fence when I got out and crossed the street. Arturo had a German shepherd, Sue Ellen had told me. The dog barked louder as I reached the front gate, spinning as if to catch its tail in its teeth.
“Rocky!” an Hispanic man shouted. He had coppery, dried-out skin and wore an orange “Cat Powered” ball cap. The dog growled at me and lunged at the fence. I didn’t move as the man hobbled down the front walk, leaning on a cane made of manzanita. “Stay!” The dog sat up obediently. “Stay, Rocky.”
“Afternoon,” I said. “I’m J. You must be Arturo.”
He had a rumpled face and a thick mustache dusted with gray. His V-neck tee was wet with sweat, and his denim work pants were dirt-chalked at the knees as if he’d been tending a flowerbed.
“Who wants to know?” he said.
“I’m a lawyer. I represent Sue Ellen Randall, your neighbor. You may not have seen her the last few days. She moved.”
“Few days?” he said, chuckling. “Try ten minutes ago. She was just here.”
I looked up and down the block but saw no signs of life. “Where did she go?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “To talk to some of the neighbors, I think. I tried telling her not to bother, ’cause nobody saw nothing.”
The man had just committed himself without knowing it. “What do you mean, nobody saw nothing?” I said. “What were they supposed to see?” He regarded me as if I’d tricked him into something. “Please,” I said.
Arturo was still deciding whether he would talk to me. “The boy, you know.”
“You mean Ronny?”
“Yeah, Ronny,” he said. “Some man, he come around here after she moved, asking about the boy.”
I described Donald Brill to Arturo, checking the street for signs of Brill’s Lincoln. An orange Chevy van was parked across from us. Halfway down the block toward Sunset, a lowered black LTD was marooned on cinder blocks in front of a weedy little yard. Across from the LTD was an old red pickup truck; it had to be Sue Ellen’s. I looked back up the street. No Lincoln. Brill was probably still stuck on the 101 South.
“Sounds like the guy,” Arturo said. “He went around to see if people say she hit the boy. Said she used a coat hanger.” He laughed.
“What’s so funny?” I said. In this case, there had never been even a suggestion of physical abuse. Manufacturing evidence was a dirty business. “I don’t get the joke.”
“No, no, he showed the hanger to me,” Arturo said. “Know where it’s from? It’s one of those fancy wood ones, the kind they give you in a fancy store. That’s what’s funny. I didn’t know the lady and her husband too good,” he said, grinning, “but I bet you they don’t shop at no stores with wood hangers.”
The man had rather casually made a damned good point. “Thanks,” I said. “You also mentioned—”
The big dog started going nuts again. Arturo pointed down the street. “There she is!”
I saw Sue Ellen standing on a porch about eight houses away. It sounded like she was yelling at someone in the doorway. I ran down the sidewalk and up the front walk. She wore shapeless gray sweats and a yellow T-shirt—looking more like Ty today. Her elbows were locked, her fists balled at her sides.
“I don’t care what you got to say!” a woman shouted at Sue Ellen from inside the house, her features muted by the screen door’s mesh. “You’re trash, baby-selling trailer trash! Get the hell offa my property!”
“How dare you talk to me that way!” Sue Ellen screamed.
I’d initially planned to scold Sue Ellen when I saw her, to talk about trust and respect, to make all the points I’d worked on earlier in the car. But the screech in her voice gave me pause. Her entire body was shaking. A rambling, didactic speech would be a vain mistake. I let go of some of my kiddie lawyer’s indignation. She was my client. She needed protecting.
“Do you even . . . know what it’s like . . .” Sue Ellen said.
I mounted the triple porch steps in one bound. “Excuse us,” I said through the screen. Carefully I guided Sue Ellen away from the screen door. “We’ll be going now.”
