by Eve Goldberg
We both fell silent.
I had no real memories of my father. He died when I was two. His unit had been captured during the war by the Japanese in the Philippines. My father and a couple thousand other prisoners were force-marched across the Bataan Peninsula with almost no food or water for weeks. Most of the them died along the way. The Army said my father may have died of starvation, dysentery, dehydration, or a shot to the head while trying to escape. Or any combination of the above. They never recovered his body.
I only knew my father from photographs, from my mother’s memories, and Uncle Lou’s. Lou had come back from the war hobbling, but alive. He made it his life’s mission to be sure his brother’s widow and kid were taken care of. He married, but never had children of his own.
Growing up, I remember Lou’s wife seemed perpetually irritated by both me and my mother. Our once a week dinners together were her personal hell. If she could have made us both evaporate, she would have. After Lou’s divorce, he had a live-in girlfriend — she was a good-looking blonde with a horsy laugh and a gambling problem — but the relationship didn’t last. After that, it was just the three of us against the world.
“Ryan,” my mother was saying on the phone, “Are you there?”
“I’m here, Mom.”
“Come by soon, okay.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I will.”
I hung up the phone, feeling shitty. I wanted to say something to my mother, something to make her feel better. But anything I said would be bogus. How do you comfort someone when there is no comfort, no good news, to be found in the truth? My father was gone, and Lou was on his way out.
I switched off the radio. Then I tossed a toothbrush and a change of clothes into a brown paper grocery bag, negotiated the flimsy stairs back down to the alley, and hopped into my car.
The Greyhound bus station in Santa Monica was nearly deserted. An elderly woman with a cane sat by herself in a chair near the ticket counter, knitting something red white and blue. I checked the bus schedule above the ticket counter. The northbound line ran twice daily and included a stop in Santa Maria. I asked the tired-looking man behind the counter if he had been on duty Wednesday night or Thursday morning. He shook his head, pointed to a Negro janitor who was sweeping the floor.
“He was,” the clerk claimed.
I went over to the janitor and asked him if he’d seen a boy hanging around a few nights ago. I showed him the photo of Joey Flynn. The janitor took his time examining the photograph.
“Sorry, mister,” he said, shaking his head. “Didn’t see him.”
He handed the photo back to me.
I got back into my car, swung onto the coast highway and headed north. I figured it would take about four hours to get to Santa Maria. I’d find a cheap motel, then get an early morning start on my search for the boy.
I’d been driving Pacific Coast Highway since high school. PCH is the road that leads to all surfing spots from San Diego to Santa Cruz. Despite its name, PCH is actually less a highway and more a narrow snaking blacktop that hugs the twisty California coastline. It’s squeezed between high crumbling cliffs on one side, and a steep drop-off to the ocean on the other.
Tonight, with no street lights and only a sliver of moon, PCH was just miles of serpentine darkness. I could smell the ocean, but couldn’t see it. And I could only hope that the occasional headlights coming from the other direction stayed on their own side of the road. Driving PCH at night took a certain steady alertness and attention. I liked the drive. I liked the sound of tires rolling across the smooth asphalt. I liked having time to think.
My mind drifted to Joey Flynn, a sandy-haired 11-year-old, who, according to his mother, would never run away because “he wouldn’t do something like that to me.” And who, again according to his mother, thought his father walked on water. I hoped Joey had run away to his fantasy father. That the worst to happen was he’d find out the father wasn’t so perfect after all. I hoped Joey’s disappearance had nothing to do with the stain on the carpet which might or might not be blood. As for Mrs. Flynn, what did I know about her so far? One minute she gushed information, a mother desperate to find her son. The next minute she clammed up. She claimed to remember almost nothing about the night Joey disappeared. I figured either she was hiding something, or she was a blackout drunk.
I knew something about blackout drunks.
Growing up, I lived with my mother in a tiny apartment on Venice Beach. It was supposed to be a temporary place until my father returned from the war. But he never did. So we stayed in that apartment, and Venice Beach became my home. During the war, my mother had worked as a welder up at Hughes Aircraft in Culver City. When the war ended, she kept working at Hughes, but had to give up her spot on the line for a lower-paying secretarial position. She paid an elderly couple up the block to watch me until she came home from work. Sometimes that wasn’t until the next day.
When the elderly couple moved away, my mother decided I didn’t need them anyway and was old enough to take care of myself. By the time I was Joey Flynn’s age, I was cleaning up my mother’s puke, putting her to bed, making excuses to her boss when she was too hung over to show up for work. I didn’t think too much about it. I just did what had to be done.
Then in high school, I watched in amazement as my mother found AA, got sober, and started to put her life together. All of a sudden I was free from having to worry about her all the time Somehow she’d hung onto her job at Hughes. She started making friends in AA. She saved enough money to buy a new car. She even joined a bowling league and started dating a guy from AA who also liked to bowl. And I was free from gearing my life around making sure she was okay.
Not that everything was easy sailing all the time. Mom had a couple of slips. Once she wound up in County lock-up after driving onto Clover Field and hitting a parked plane. It had been a few years since she last slipped, but she wasn’t dating the bowling guy anymore, and I knew she was lonely. Her loneliness made me worry. I could picture her right now: sitting in her recliner with a pack of Newport menthols and an Orange Fanta, watching Johnny Carson, and worrying about Uncle Lou.
It was 2:00 AM when I reached Santa Maria. I checked into the first motel I could find, and sacked out for the night. The next morning, I went across the street to a diner, picked up some coffee and a donut, a sandwich for later, and the local newspaper. I asked the waitress where I could find the central post office. She told me there was only one post office in Santa Maria, and pointed me towards it.
The town was wide open and flat — part cowboy, part Mexican, and part modern Deluxe. I passed a motel advertising telephones in every room. Another motel offered Magic Fingers vibrating beds. The movie theater on Broadway was showing Donovan’s Reef. Maybe they’d get Cleopatra by Christmas.
The post office was in a brick building the color of sand. An American flag drooped listlessly from a pole on the roof. I went inside and located Doc Flynn’s PO box. Then I crossed the street, got into my car, rolled down the windows, and settled in.
If this had been a weekday, I would have gone down to the County Courthouse to check whether Flynn had any liens or lawsuits, any kind of public record which might reveal a street address. That sort of research was the side of the business I’d been doing for Lou for years. But this was Saturday. County offices closed. I’d have to be patient — and lucky.
Keeping one eye on the post office entrance, I opened the newspaper and scanned it. I learned that a new Presbyterian church was being built to accommodate the growing Santa Maria population; that the high school football coach was retiring; that President Kennedy was in Berlin visiting Checkpoint Charlie. There was a quote from Kennedy saying, “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’ ”
Ich bin ein Berliner. What did that mean? And: We are all citizens of Berlin? Lou would have something to say about that.
Some movement caught my eye
. I looked up from the paper and watched a leather-faced man wearing a cowboy hat and boots saunter into the post office. He emerged in a few minutes with some letters in his hand. Not Flynn.
A while later, an overweight woman pushing a baby stroller went into the PO. At noon I ate the sandwich, got out of the car, and stretched. A few more customers went in and out of the PO. None were Flynn. By three o’clock I was cursing Cora Flynn for insisting that no police be involved in the search for her son. One visit to the local Sheriff and I might have located Flynn in minutes.
An hour later I was cursing myself for wasting a day that I could have spent searching for the big white-haired man from Kelbo’s. What idiot parks in front of a post office on the slimmest chance that one particular man might show up on one particular day?
Then I saw him. I flipped to the back of my spiral notebook and examined the Flynn family photo. I looked back up a the man walking near my car. Doc Flynn was no longer a smiling, clean-cut, suit-and-tie college professor. Not by a long shot.
CHAPTER 6
He was rail thin and had a bushy beard streaked with grey. He wore a faded denim shirt, jeans, and mud-caked work boots. As he passed by my car, I had a brief but decent look at his face. There was a strange, wild look in his eyes. Something off-kilter. Something that instantly put an end to my idea that Joey might be a simple runaway hanging out with his dad.
I was still holding the photo when Doc Flynn emerged from the PO. He was carrying a small package wrapped in brown paper. He got into a dirty Ford pick-up and took off. I waited until he turned the corner, then cranked the key in the ignition.
I tailed Flynn’s truck out of Santa Maria and up into the hills east of town, keeping a respectable distance and a couple of curves between us. The hills were covered with chaparral and the occasional stand of oak or madrone. The air was dry and smelled of sage. Eventually the paved road gave way to dirt. To keep out of sight, I had to lag further and further back until all I was tailing was the churned-up dust.
I followed the cloud of dust past a jagged outcropping of rock, rounded a blind curve.
Suddenly, I hit the brakes.
Fuck!!!!
I had nearly smashed into Flynn’s pick-up which was parked diagonally across the road. Flynn was standing by his truck, holding a shotgun. The barrel was pointed at my windshield.
“Get out,” he said. “Hands on your head.”
Flynn was smiling. Grinning, actually. Like this was all an amusing prank. It crossed my mind that he might be insane.
“I said: get out,” he repeated. “Hands on your head.”
I got out and put my hands on my head.
“Sit down,” he said.
I sat down.
I had never had a gun pointed at me before. I felt my muscles start to tense up. Don’t panic, I told myself. This is just another wave. Count to three. Stay alert.
Flynn set the shotgun on the ground, then pat searched my body. He pulled the wallet out of my back pocket, looked through it, tossed it onto the dirt. Without taking his eyes off me, he picked up the shotgun again. He took a couple of steps back, and pointed it at my head.
“What’s your story, man?” he said.
“I’m a private investigator. Your ex-wife hired me to find your son.”
“No shit?” He grinned again.
“He’s been missing since Wednesday and she thinks he might be up here.”
“How do I know you’re not a cop?”
“Because if I were a cop there’d be four of me, or maybe ten, and we’d show up fully loaded just before dawn and right about now you’d be sitting in a cell somewhere screaming bloody murder for me to unshackle you so you could call your lawyer or take a piss.”
Flynn laughed. It was a deep, belly laugh that shook his whole body. He was really enjoying himself.
“In other words,” he said, “a cop wouldn’t be so dense as to get himself caught in the act by an old fart like me.”
“That about sums it up.”
He chuckled. Then he walked over to my car and pulled the keys from the ignition. He walked backwards, keeping the gun trained in my direction. Without turning away from me, he removed a jumble of rope from his truck’s flatbed.
“Put your hands behind your back.”
“Is this really necessary, Mr. Flynn? I’m not here to cause you any trouble. I just want to find Joey. Is he here?”
Flynn said nothing. He moved towards me and flicked the tip of the gun barrel against my arm.
“Alright, alright,” I said. “Be cool.”
I put my hands behind my back and he tied my wrists together with the rope. He worked faster and more efficiently than I expected. When I tried to wiggle my wrists, they wouldn’t budge.
“Okay wise guy,” Doc Flynn commanded, “get in the truck.”
“What about my car?”
“Don’t worry about that. We’ll take care of it.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Don’t worry about that either. Just get in the truck.”
I got into the truck. We drove up the dirt road in silence. Soon, on the right, appeared a high chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire. All I could see behind the fence was more scrub brush and a few trees. Flynn drove along the chain-link until we reached an iron gate flanked by two stone pedestals. The gate swung open as we approached. We drove through and the gate closed behind us.
Flynn maneuvered the truck up a pitted gravel road. We seemed to be in some kind of primitive compound or ranch. We passed a ragged wood shack . . . a clearing with a vegetable garden . . . a mud hut about the size and shape of a camping tent. Flynn braked in front of a small log cabin with a steep pitched roof. Two metal patio chairs sat on the front porch. The cabin had a door, but oddly, no windows.
He got out of the truck and opened the passenger door.
“Get out,” he said mildly.
I slid off the seat awkwardly, hands behind my back, and followed him into the cabin.
I was in a very dark room. A sliver of light leaked in between some wall planks, and a bit more entered through a small hole in the center of the ceiling that could have been an improvised skylight or a construction mistake.
“Relax,” Doc Flynn said. “Have a seat.”
I looked around for a chair, but there were none. The only piece of furniture was a shabby bureau pushed up against one wall. In the middle of the room was an oriental rug with an intricate pattern only vaguely visible in the darkness. I sat down on the rug, but I didn’t relax. Flynn leaned his shotgun against the wall. He sat down on the rug directly in front of me, a bit too close for comfort. He stared intently directly into my eyes.
“So Ryan, have you read any William James?” he asked, as if this were the most logical question in the world.
“Excuse me?”
“James. William James. Brother to Henry. Pioneering psychologist and philosopher. Intrepid explorer of mystical experience, the world beyond and within.”
He watched me expectantly, waiting for a reply. I probably appeared as baffled as I felt.
Flynn chuckled. “Is that a no?”
I shrugged.
“How about Huxley?” he probed. “Brave New World. Doors of Perception.”
Who was this guy? What did he want from me? I knew what I wanted from him: I wanted not to die. He wasn’t holding the gun anymore; that was progress. In a straight-up physical fight I believed I could get the best of him.
“Look, Mr. Flynn, I don’t know what this is all about, but if we’re having an English lit exam, could you untie my hands first? My brain works better that way.”
He ignored my lame humor. “No Huxley, huh? What about marijuana? Tried it?” He was grinning again.
Maybe Doc Flynn was insane. Or maybe he was something else. There was something about him that reminded me of Big Daddy and the other cats who hung out Venice West Café and the Gas House, beat joints on the Boardwalk crammed with chess tables, bongos, and poetry written on the wa
lls. The cops were always trying to shut down these places, citing reasons like “reading poetry without a license.” The beat scene wasn’t my thing, but the Boardwalk was my backyard, so I’d been dropping by ever since I was a teenager. It’s where I first got into jazz, listening to Buddy Collette and Shelley Manne and Shorty Rogers jam at Venice West.
Flynn wasn’t letting it drop. “Marijuana,” he repeated. “Pot. Weed. Have you smoked it or not?”
“Sure. Couple of times.”
“How was the experience?”
“Fine.”
“Come on wise guy, enough of the one word answers. What was it like?”
“I got buzzed.”
“And?”
“Music sounded awesome.”
“Ah yes, music. Sound. The sensory plane. So you liked it?”
“Sure.”
“Excellent. Promising start. Now it’s time to graduate. Not to disparage the sensory plane, but there’s so much more.”
Flynn stood up abruptly. He grabbed the shotgun and left the cabin. I heard the key turn in the lock. I thought about trying to kick the door in and making a run for it, but I didn’t figure I’d get very far. Doc Flynn might be crazy, but he wasn’t stupid. Besides, if Joey was here, I didn’t want to blow the opportunity to find him.
A few minutes later, Flynn returned without the gun. He locked the door to the cabin and put the keys in his back pocket. He was carrying a package that looked like the one I’d seen him collect at the post office. It was about the size of a transistor radio. Flynn sat down on the rug and unwrapped it. Inside was a cardboard box. Inside the box was a plastic bag. And inside the bag, sandwiched between two sheets of cardboard, was a stack of blotter paper dyed bright orange. Each sheet of paper was about four inches square. Flynn counted the sheets, handling them delicately. The sheets were scored with black lines into a grid of small squares. Carefully, he tore off two of the squares and held them up.
“Lysergic acid diethylamide. LSD. Synthesized from ergotamine, a chemical derived from ergot. That’s a grain fungus that typically grows on rye. Pretty nifty, don’t you think?”
