“Not everything ties up into a nice little bow, you know.”
“You’re right,” I agreed, as unappealing as those words were.
“Are you done?” he asked.
“I can’t think of any other questions.”
“No, are you done with the whole thing?” I didn’t know how to answer him. It felt like there was more to do. My internal deliberation gave him his answer. “I didn’t think you would be. This will fall on deaf ears, but don’t be an idiot.”
“I’ll try not to,” I laughed.
“Seriously, don’t be an idiot.”
“That’s sound advice, Detective.”
“Make sure you take it.”
A FAMILIAR SOUND
This time I came prepared.
I parked my car in an open spot fifty yards or so from the house. I brought food and water to last for some indeterminate length of time, enough backlogged newspapers to occupy my mind, and a blanket and pillow, but I didn’t end up using the latter. For a day and a half I stewed in my car in the merciless heat and picked at the flaw in the consensus thinking around the blackmailing scheme. If Jeanette and Nelson were complicit, wittingly or unwittingly, why would she be the only one who had to lose her life?
In the time outside his house, I never saw Nelson but that didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of activity. It mostly revolved around Nelson’s brother, often accompanied by his grandmother but sometimes alone, coming and going from the house on an endless stream of errands, most of the time returning with arms laden with giant shopping bags of unknown contents.
Things settled down in the evening. The lights burned behind the curtains for so long that I thought no one ever turned them off. They eventually went dark sometime after midnight and stayed dark until a brief moment in the early hours when a light from somewhere deep in the house clicked on. The faint yellow spoke of insomnia or thirst or something else. It didn’t last long and the house remained dark for the rest of the night.
I never went to sleep. I turned the car on once or twice to pump some heat into the cabin and to activate the wipers to clear the collection of dew from the front windshield. The city was remarkably still in those few hours before sunrise. A beautiful sun eventually inched its way in between the houses and lit up the side of my face. The wonderfully sad pink of an early Sunday morning befell the neighborhood.
I watched the abuelita waddle out in a floral print dress and fake pearls and purse heavy with the words of God. Her son, reluctantly “dressed up” in black slacks and a white t-shirt, trailed behind her at a distance that conveyed a preference for doing something else with his free morning. I checked my watch — quarter to nine. Fifteen minutes until the service began. I placed a quick call, gave it a few minutes in case they returned home for some forgotten donation envelope, then got out of my car and pushed my stiff legs to the front door of the house.
My knock rattled the metal door like tin plates used to scare crows out of a cornfield. I didn’t think Nelson would run but the delay in answering the door led me to doubt that assumption. Just as I was about to loop around the back, the door opened and the kid stood there looking disheveled and sleepy-eyed. He still had his pajamas on. I gently brushed past him before he mustered up any form of defiance. There was an unmistakable smell lingering in the air, something sour. I helped myself to the couch with the overworked springs. Nelson remained by the door, his hand still on the knob.
“Hey, what are you doing?” he started three seconds too late because I was already seated and had no intention of leaving. “You can’t come in here. You’ll wake everyone up.”
“They already left for church,” I told him.
“Oh,” he said, looking around like someone trying to get their bearings.
“Why don’t you sit down,” I instructed. “I have a couple of questions for you.”
“I already talked to the police.”
He came and sat opposite me anyway.
“I know. I want you to talk to me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I asked you to.” I spied one of the shopping bags in the corner. “What’s all that?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, looking annoyed.
“Mind if I take a look?” I had no intention of getting up, but Nelson did and made a move to intercept me. It was the fastest I had ever seen him move. “Must be something important.”
“What do you want?” he asked. He was getting his legs under him and stood over me in as threatening a pose as he could probably ever muster.
“Can you tell her to come out, please?”
“What?”
“Come on, kid, stop screwing around and tell her to come out here so we can all talk.”
“She’s not even here,” he tried. “I don’t know where she is.”
“It’s okay,” said a soft voice.
Jeanette stood at the edge of the hallway. She wore a nightgown that looked borrowed from an old woman and probably was. Her hair was loosely pulled together in a band and rested limply on her shoulder. Her eyes were heavy from interrupted sleep and spoke of a mother’s weariness. Even her voice, made deeper from having just awoken, added a few years to her.
“You’re the man working for my grandfather?”
She was the only one who questioned my temporary job whose gaze didn’t include a judgment with it.
“Right now, I work for a faceless corporation. But yes, your grandfather hired me to find you.”
“You found me,” she smiled. “Now what?”
“Let’s talk about it.”
Jeanette joined Nelson on the couch. He took her hand in his to offer up support but it was clear in the gesture and in the way she sat there that she was the one providing the support to him.
“So, tell me the plan.”
Neither wanted to start but it was clear by their shared look that they had thought something out in fairly deep detail. It took some coaxing by me to get it out of them. Jeanette eventually took the helm and explained their next move and that’s when youth finally revealed itself in all its glorious stupidity.
They had some vague plan involving a cousin in Mexico and fifty grand they thought they were going to get to live off but didn’t. They made it sound a hundred times that because, as they reminded me numerous times, “everything is super cheap in Mexico.” Nelson had relatives to help with the baby and they could work and live some simple life and get away from the “meanness of people” in our city. Apparently, only happy, caring people lived south of the border. I let them blabber on because there was something charming about their irrational hope and the total conviction in which they expressed it. They were just a couple of knuckleheads too delusional to see the inanity of a “plan” that didn’t deserve that name.
I led them to believe I would help them so that I could dissuade them from trying it in the first place. And the one thing I knew I needed to do to accomplish that was to not let them out of my sight. I threw out the hundred grand that Valenti promised me and that if I could collect it then they could have it to help set up a life in the pueblo. That idea excited them far more than I thought it would. They latched onto the offer like it was the single solution to all of their troubles. They went so far as to strategize how they could help me get it. Jeanette could meet her grandfather to prove that I fulfilled my duty and then she could escape at a later date. We all agreed this was the best approach, and although I thought it was the dumbest idea ever uttered, I couldn’t help but share in their excitement.
Jeanette got up from the couch and headed back down the hallway towards the bedrooms. Then I heard what her mother’s ears heard before me, the soft gurgling and then the full cries of a hungry baby. Nelson and I continued the planning discussion and worked out the remaining details before we could fully lock it into place. There was a knock on the door, and I found myself answering it without even thinking it through. Even when confronted with a face so out of place from our current location, I still didn’t t
hink twice about it.
I shuffled Sami into the room and only when he shoved me forward with one hand and brought up his second hand that held a rusty hammer did I realize my mistake. He shut the door and locked it. His wild eyes danced about the room. He didn’t see what he expected to see and continued searching until he did.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Who?” I tried.
“She’s here,” Sami droned. “I know she’s here. She told me.”
“I don’t know who told you what but whoever you’re looking for isn’t here.” It was like talking to a concrete wall. I heard my words bouncing back to me but they had no effect on the man they were directed at. He just kept asking the same thing over and over again. He rocked on his heels like the ground swelled under him in intermittent waves. There was a serenity and distance in his eyes that was more unnerving than when I first stood under his penetrating gaze. He was talking to us but you got the sense he didn’t even realize there were humans in the room with him.
“I don’t know who you are looking for but I can help you find her. It shouldn’t be too hard,” I continued in the hopes of directing his attention away from the back room. “Do you want to talk about it here or should we go outside where we can have more privacy? It might be better if we went outside. I don’t really know these people all too well so I don’t want to impose on them any longer that I have already. We should probably go outside and talk because I have some other things that we need to discuss, too. Some things I need your help on.”
I shot Nelson a reassuring nod and slowly moved towards the front door, towards Sami and the hammer he held by his side. He opened up his stance, just a little, but the meaning of the gesture was there — he considered letting me pass. I walked into the opening and crossed within striking distance of the hammer. I felt somewhat confident he was going to let me pass but I couldn’t really be sure. And the thought that I now had my back to him made me even more on edge, as a blow from that hammer to the back of my head could come without warning at any moment. I reached out to the lock and in doing so, I glanced back at Sami. He hadn’t moved. I turned the lock very carefully to avoid any sharp sounds that might disturb whatever balance he currently had. The lock moved easily under my thumb. I reached for the door handle and did the same thing. The door slowly swung open and I pivoted to face him.
“Let’s talk outside,” I said softly. Sami started to lean in my direction. “We’ll be better when we talk out here.” He looked up at me and I believed I was finally starting to get through to him. His eyes had a flicker of life in them, a spark of engagement. His leg swung around and took its first hesitant step towards me.
Then that sound again from deep in the house. I heard it first. I watched Sami’s right eye narrow like he was trying to reconcile the distant gurgle with the people in the room. Confusion crossed his face as he couldn’t quite put it all together. I filled the silence with my dithering, just spilling out nonsensical words, anything at all to mask the sounds and distract his attention from what was coming out from the back of the house. It didn’t work. The unmistakable cries of a newborn filled the room. Sami’s head snapped around and his body followed with cold, sleek precision as he calmly walked back in the direction of the baby’s sounds.
I ran after him. It was the only time in my life that I just acted. I caught him outside Nelson’s bedroom and threw my body into his backside. We toppled to the floor, and I rolled off his back and into the hallway wall. I reached out for the arm with the hammer and grabbed what I could. He jerked his arm back and freed himself from my grip but he also lost his balance and fell back into the opposite wall. Jeanette’s screams filled the narrow space. Nelson came bounding down the hall. I barked an order but he was already ahead of me and dashed into the room with Jeanette and the baby and slammed the door shut. The room was the only source of light in the hallway and the closed door cast a near darkness between me and Sami. I didn’t wait. I threw myself forward to the spot where I thought he was. I felt a hard wall but I also got a piece of soft flesh. I clawed at it and anything I could. I felt something warm and moist which might have been his eyes. He wriggled underneath me. I tried to make myself as heavy as possible to keep him down. There was a loud thud and I found myself letting out an airless cough. My back suddenly felt hot and tingly. I gasped for a breath of air and although all the components to breathing were in motion, no air came in.
Another thud from the hammer crashed down on my back, this time lower and squarely on a bone. My mind became singularly focused on keeping his body close to mine. I somehow knew that distance between us meant more blows from the hammer but in more dangerous parts of my body. But with each swing, I felt myself being drained of what little energy and strength I had. My arms numbed from exhaustion. I held on but without any kind of force. I was slipping down. My eyes, now adjusted to the darkness, saw a form moving up and away from me. It made a swift, arching motion, the hammer slightly trailing.
Then the form jerked backwards and a loud clap exploded in the hallway. Sami spun off his feet and stumbled down to his knees. There was barely a pause before he propped himself up with the hammer and got back to his feet. He struggled back into a striking pose. And despite the window of escape, I remained in my position on the floor. The hammer squared itself for a blow to my head.
“Don’t do it!” a voice behind me shouted.
It jarred Sami from his focus of crushing my skull. But he didn’t drop the hammer. He stared at Detective Ricohr and the gun pointed at his chest. In the brief ten seconds of stand-off between Sami and the gun, I could see the deliberation in his head and the eventual conclusion that his own life was much too important for him to let it end prematurely. He smiled and let the hammer fall to the floor.
BLACK ROCKS
The following couple of days were a flurry of activity involving a quick hospital stay and the interminable visits from members of the police. Claire came to see me a few times but her face was only a brief respite from the litany of nurses and doctors and detectives that asked endless questions that I was often too tired to answer. Detective Ricohr came once just to admonish me for ignoring his advice.
“But I did listen,” I reminded him. “I called you before I went into that house.”
“And if you hadn’t you’d be dead,” he shot back.
Neither wanted to admit that the other was right.
Eventually, I was released from the hospital and took a taxi home, forced to lean forward onto the passenger seat because it was too painful to lean back.
I returned to work after a few days and had to explain in detail the reasons behind my unexpected leave of absence. Each detail felt like yet another pinprick in the trial balloon of my attempt to earn the leadership role of the department.
Pat Faber eventually set up a meeting for early Tuesday morning. We terminated people on Tuesdays so the selection of this day caused me concern. He greeted me without his usual banter and somberly waved me over to a seat in his office. He waited a moment to collect his thoughts. In that time I scanned the shelves behind him. They, too, were lined with crystal trophies and awards just as Bob Gershon’s shelves had been. I wondered if they were legitimate.
The firm would never terminate me because I lost the bid to take the leadership role but they would make it clear that my future there was not a long-term option. I would scuffle along for a few years and then quietly be forced out. But I was too young to retire and would have to reinvent myself with all the youthful energy and drive it takes to reestablish a career. That thought made me sick to my stomach.
“There’s a stretch of country behind my house in Palm Desert,” he began and I thought to myself, this bastard has more houses than hairs on his head. I also pondered the fact that I had heard every single one of Pat’s folksy metaphors but I had never heard this one. “It’s named after an old prospector who tried to make his fortune in the hills. There are still remnants of his work — old wash planes, pick axes, tunne
ls carved out of the scrabble. I take Bessie back there and let her run. She loves the open country as do I.”
“Me, too,” I think I muttered, but Pat ignored me. He even looked a little miffed that I was interfering with his rhythm.
“There’s one cave in particular back there,” he began again. “Bessie stumbled upon it. It’s up a narrow canyon that I’m sure no one has seen except for the man who made it. And me.” There was a thick vein of pride in his voice. “The front is collapsed, the beams forming a big X, but you can see somewhat in there, depending on the time of day. If you shout inside it takes a long time for your echo to come back. It’s deep. I can’t tell you how many times I have stood in front of that cave. Bessie, the old girl, she won’t go near it. It scares her. It intrigues her but it scares her. At some point in life, Chuck, a man is going to come upon a cave like this one.”
My mind raced with the possibilities of what the cave stood for. Was it my career — abandoned, hopeless, a hole of lost dreams? Was it Pat’s delusional self-journey — daring, solitary, the pinnacle of his life’s work?
“And you have a decision to make. The hardest decision in your life because the cave has so many unknowns.” My heart sank with each additional line. “Chuck, I stood there this past weekend and stared at that entrance for an hour. And a single thought came to me.
“A black rock isn’t black in the dark,” he stated, and paused long enough for those profound words to sink in. I found myself nodding along with him despite not understanding anything that was coming out of his mouth.
“Chuck, you are the man to lead this group. Congratulations,” he said and rose to shake my hand.
I rose to accept with a handshake and squeezed harder than I needed to. “Pat, I know this wasn’t an easy decision,” I told him. He brushed it off but I could tell he was very proud of the “courage” he exhibited in selecting me. “You made the right decision.”
Not one to miss an opportunity to cut someone down a peg, he shot back, “Then you have your mission. Prove it to me.”
The Eternal Summer (Chuck Restic Private Investigator Series Book 2) Page 20
