Well, well, well.
Barsotti parked at the fence and tapped his horn a couple of times. Brother Eldon came out of his yurt and lumbered down the hill to the car, only today’s Brother Eldon had ditched the robe. His T-shirt was tight across the chest and loose over his jeans. I focused my sights on his exposed linebacker neck, with its distinctive tat. There was an old ex-con who lived in a shoe. Thanks to Mike, I’d been brushing up on my nursery rhymes. I moved to the ink on Brother Eldon’s arm, the crude sword with its swirling, leafy scrollwork.
Barsotti suddenly opened the car door and got nose to nose with Brother Eldon. Both appeared spitting mad. I tried to read their lips, but they were too far away. After a few moments, things cooled down. Barsotti got back in the car, leaned across the seat, and opened the passenger door. Brother Eldon climbed in next to him.
This was not good. I stuffed my gear in my backpack, ready to make a mad dash to my car. But they didn’t go anywhere. My expensive new binoculars were useless. I cursed the hot sun, tinted windows, and Barsotti’s airconditioning.
After ten minutes, it was over. Brother Eldon jumped out and stomped up the hill. Barsotti drove back to the pig farm. I stayed where I was, squinting under the hot sun, completely in the dark.
So they knew each other. Big deal. For all I knew, Barsotti was just relaying my own interest in the cult, like any good neighbor might. Beyond nothing, I now had zip.
I pulled into the hospital’s patient pickup area just as a large male nurse wheeled John D down the walkway to the curb. The attendant eased him into the front seat. He grunted a thank you to the nurse and a good morning to me.
“No muscle car today?” he commented.
“Not today.” I flashed on Julie’s glowing face last night as she shifted gears smoothly in the empty beach parking lot. It was her idea to practice driving the Mustang there first, before taking it into traffic.
She might just be one in a million.
“Well, I appreciate you coming all the way out here,” John D said.
“No problem. I stopped off on the way and spied on your neighbors for a little while.”
I described the heated conversation between Barsotti and Brother Eldon.
“Any idea what those two might be fighting about?”
He shook his head.
“How about yesterday? Any idea who might be behind that?”
He shook his head again, and yawned.
“So what actually happened?”
He sat back and closed his eyes.
“John D,” I warned, “if you don’t tell me exactly what happened, I’m making you hitchhike home.”
He chuckled, and opened his eyes.
“I’m just messing with you, Ten,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I can. I was out of cash, so I stopped to get some from my bank’s ATM, across the street from Dot’s Double Good Diner—that’s where I always get breakfast. I was about to cross the street when these two guys ran out of the alley and jumped me so quick I didn’t know what hit me. Or who. One of ’em grabbed my money right out of my hand, and the other one knocked me down and started boot-kicking me in the ribs. I heard someone yell from across the street. Good thing. I think the plan was to finish me off. I guess I passed out. Next thing I know, some paramedic is strapping an oxygen mask over my face.”
I asked him a few more questions, but he had nothing more to add, and I could see he really was getting sleepy. When we got to his house, I helped him into his bedroom and got him stretched out on the bed. He was sound asleep before I got his work boots unlaced.
As I left his house, something snagged the corner of my vision. I crossed the yard to his little patch of medicinal weed. The marijuana plants had all been uprooted, the earth around them trampled. At first I thought maybe it was raccoons, but if so they were fairly selective. They had left the flowerbeds and nearby tomato plants untouched. Unless there was a gang of dope-smoking voles around here, this was caused by a human. A human filled with spite or greed, who neither knew nor cared about John D’s pain.
Back came the rage, in a hot surge. This was becoming a regular habit of mine.
I walked inside and took a look around for the mason jar of buds, but I couldn’t find it, either. This was looking more and more like the work of that steadfast upholder of family morals, Norman the conservative Fun-Cop. I left a sticky note next to a full glass of water on John D’s bedside table. I included my cell phone number, in large numerals, and the words CALL TEN.
I was just pulling up to the bank when John D called, sounding a lot more chipper.
“Listen,” I told him. “I’m here at the ATM where you got jumped. I need to look at yesterday morning’s surveillance footage. I’ll have better luck if you hire me as your private investigator. I’ll even give you a special rate—you can pay me with a bag of almonds.”
“You’re hired,” he said.
“Thanks. Anything you need from town?”
“Nope. I’m gonna take my meds and maybe sleep a little more.”
I broke the news to him about his garden raid and the missing mason jar. He took it better than I expected.
“It’s irritating, but it ain’t the end of the world. I got a backup stash from last season’s crop. Every farmer knows you gotta plan ahead for the lean times.”
I decided to do a reality check on something. “I need to ask you a question, John D. Does Norman know about your tumor?”
There was a pause. When John D answered, his voice was noticeably cooler.
“Nope, and I don’t have any plans to tell him, either. He and I have been butting heads our whole lives, and lately it’s gotten out of hand. So the way I see it, my cancer is none of his business.”
His words echoed my own from this morning’s meltdown. If the subject was as sore for him as it was for me, I’d better tread carefully. I didn’t want to lose John D’s trust.
“Do you mind telling me what’s been going on?” I said.
“Give me half a minute.”
I heard shuffling, and the scrape of a struck match.
John D inhaled deeply. In the ensuing gap of silence, I pictured him holding the perfumed smoke in his lungs. He answered on an exhale.
“Three or four years back, I asked my son to look into something for me, a professional favor, you might say, having to do with the family land, and he blew me off. Then he started pestering me about selling my acreage to those pig farmers. They offered four hundred thousand for the whole parcel, but I told them they could go straight to hell. I didn’t work this land for thirty years to have it turned into a pig farm. I’m not selling, and I’m not moving.”
“How many acres?”
“Eighty.”
That was curious. From my observations of the pig farm, the last thing they needed to do was expand.
A few dots began dancing and circling each other in the back of my mind.
“Do you have any life insurance, John D?”
“Nope. Never saw a need.”
“How about your estate? Is Norman your beneficiary?”
“He was, but I just changed my will.” John D’s voice rose. “Do you know I’ve never even met his wife? Four years married, and he’s too ashamed of his own father to introduce me to her. Well, I say screw him and the horse he rode in on. I’m leaving it all to the Nature Conservancy—maybe they can turn my crops around. Norman don’t know that yet, but I can’t wait to see the look on his face when I tell him.” John D was practically panting with anger.
I backed off. I’d find out more later. Right now, John D needed to rest, and I needed to go. I said good-bye and asked him to stand by in case I required him to run interference with the bank manager.
He went me one better. By the time I was ushered into the manager’s office, John D had already paved the way. According to the elderly Mr. Acheson, they’d been doing business together since the early ’70s, when the population of Lancaster barely tipped 30,000. He was “outraged, simply outraged,” at the atta
ck. Half an hour later, I was holding my own personal DVD of the ATM surveillance footage from yesterday morning.
I made a quick stop at a grocery store for some hummus and chips. I figured John D and I could watch the footage on his flat-screen together, and with any luck, he’d recognize one or both of the men who jumped him.
At this point, my Toyota practically drove itself to John D’s. Halfway there, I spotted flashing lights in my rear-view mirror. A patrol car was closing in fast. The siren emitted one short blast, and I put on my turn signal. I was well under the speed limit, so I knew it wasn’t that, but my heart jumped to my throat anyway, and I was flooded with a kind of shame.
Welcome to the other side of the law.
I pulled over and started fumbling for my license and registration. Then I glanced back and realized it wasn’t California Highway Patrol after all—the car was marked with the seal of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.
A heavyset man looked in at me. His khaki uniform was spotless, and the crease in his pants could slice a baguette. His pocked nose was beaded with sweat, his eyes a striking color of blue. I put his age at just one side or the other of 50.
“License and registration,” he said. No “sir” or “please” attached.
I handed him both, keeping my voice mild. “Can you tell me what this is about?”
He glanced at the documents, and passed them back.
“You the fellow that’s out there all the time smoking dope with John D. Murphy?”
So Norman already had a good friend in law enforcement. And here I thought I was special.
“Well, ‘all the time’ might be overstating. But yes, I’m that fellow. And you are?”
“Jack Dardon,” he said. “Deputy Sheriff, District One.” He didn’t offer his hand. Nor I mine.
I waited him out, which he didn’t like much.
“You running some kind of hustle on that old man?”
“No hustle, sir. I work for him. I’m a private detective; before that I was with LAPD Robbery/Homicide for nine years. I’m trying to find out who beat him up.”
He nodded at that.
“Where’re you based out of?”
“My office is in Topanga Canyon.”
His voice was skeptical.
“And John D hired you to come way the hell out here just to find out who beat him up?”
I chose to tell the truth, figuring a man that meticulous with his uniform probably cared about correctness in other matters.
“I came out here on another case, Deputy Dardon, something involving one of John D’s neighbors, and I happened to meet up with him in the course of my investigation. We connected. I like the man.”
Dardon removed his hat and ran his fingers through his gray-brown curls. “What kind of case would that be?”
“I can’t give you many details, because to tell you the truth, I don’t have many yet, but it has to do with the religious group that lives next door.”
He stared at me for a long moment. Just then his cell phone rang; he fished it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. He stepped back a few paces to answer.
“Yeah?” I heard. Then, “Right now?” Dardon shot a look in my direction. “I’m talking to him this very moment.” He mumbled a few final words to his caller. Then he walked over to my car again, his eyes sparking with some new mischief.
“You headed for John D’s?”
I nodded.
“You strike me as a stand-up guy. Norman wants me to help him declare his father mentally incapable. What say you follow me up there, see how well that flies?”
Norman was waiting on the front steps of his father’s house. He glanced at me, then barked at Dardon. “What the fuck?”
Dardon’s jaw tightened. “Norman, watch your mouth.”
So Norman and the deputy were not as tight as I had thought. Good. Even better, Norman chose to ignore Dardon’s warning. Face darkening to a dull maroon, Norman actually started to sputter. “Goddamn it to hell, I’m a tax-paying citizen and a county official. You’re supposed to be helping me here.”
Dardon said, “Norman, I’m not supposed to be doing anything but finding out what the heck is going on with your daddy. Which I am now going to do. You can just stay outside until you get your head straightened out.”
Norman huffed at that, but didn’t move as the deputy sheriff left us both and walked straight into the house. Norman glared at me, but somehow managed to hold his tongue until the officer returned. Dardon hooked a finger at me. “John D wants to talk to you.”
Norman exploded. “—the fuck d’you mean? This guy is a total—”
“Shut it, Norman,” Dardon said, and we walked inside. John D was enthroned in his recliner, chuckling at an old caper movie. He paused it and turned to look at us. His eyes appeared suspiciously red to me.
“Hey, Ten. How’re you doin’?” His gaze latched onto the bag of chips poking out of my grocery bag.
“Doing great,” I said. “In fact, I found a copy of that DVD I told you about. Maybe we can watch it later.”
The Chief canted a curious eye in my direction.
“John D and I are big movie fans,” I explained.
“Movie fans. Right,” Dardon said.
“So Ten,” John D drawled, “seeing as how we been spending quite a bit of time together lately, why don’t you tell Jack here whether or not you think I’m okay, that my mentus is, you know, compus.”
“I think you are,” I said.
“How about you, Jack? Based on what you’ve seen so far, you think I can handle my own affairs? Or am I a nut job, like Norman out there claims?”
Dardon stretched it out a bit, but the corners of his mouth were twitching, so I knew it was all in fun. He said, “No, John D, I think you’re the same stubborn, ornery SOB you’ve been as long as I can remember.”
John D gave us both a beatific grin, which froze at Dardon’s next words.
“And I also think Norman’s a chip off the old block.”
Perfectly timed, Norman bellowed from outside, “You guys having a fucking party in there?”
Dardon shook his head. “You two don’t need a sheriff. You need a therapist.”
“Tell Norman that,” John D growled. “He’s the one causing all the trouble.”
Dardon opened his mouth as if to say more, then closed it again.
Halfway out the door, he paused. “I assume you have a prescription for your marijuana, John D.”
“I do, but I wish I didn’t,” John D grumbled. “If something’s legal, it ain’t half the fun.”
CHAPTER 22
The sequence of black-and-white surveillance images jittered forward in a repetitive, déjà vu kind of way. The sizes, shapes, genders, and ages changed, but the actions were almost identical: fish out a card, squint at the screen, feed the machine its slice of plastic, tap in a code, remove tongue-thrust of cash, more squinting, count cash, remove card, remove receipt, walk away while pocketing all of the above.
“When was it?” I asked, keeping one eye on the time code.
“Around eight-thirty,” John D said.
“Okay. We’re getting close.”
“There,” he said.
I used slo-mo. John D shuffled up to the ATM, digging out his wallet. Fished, squinted, fed, tapped. The ATM spat out five bills. He counted the cash twice and turned away from the camera as he started to place the bills in his wallet. Still in slow motion, a smallish man materialized from somewhere left of the frame, his arm extended outward, moving as if he had all the time in the world.
Frame by painful frame, we watched him pinch the bills from John D’s hand, shove him hard, then move off to the right, crossing paths with a second, taller man, who rolled in with his head lowered like a bull’s. He body-blocked John D, who slow-tumbled to the ground, his mouth opening into a perfect circle of surprise. It would have been comical if it weren’t so awful.
The man drew back a cowboy boot, the sharp toe sleeved in metal.
One, two, three kicks to the ribs. I flinched with each pointed thrust. His mouth stretched into a sneer at the crumpled body below him. Then he executed a slow half-pirouette and followed his partner off screen. I checked the time code. Less than 30 seconds from start to finish. It had felt like a lifetime.
Then I checked John D. He was hunched forward in the recliner. His arms were crossed high and tight over his chest, and his breath was shallow. Well, mine was, too. My body had gone bulletproof, tightening into an armored state of readiness, as if to ward off the blows on the screen. I ran the segment again, and freeze-framed the first assailant.
I leaned closer. I knew him, only last time he had a sponge in his hand and was lathering up the muddy underside of a luxury coupe.
The second guy, the one with the boots, took longer to identify. He had the requisite black hoodie pulled low over his face. I guess some assaults don’t count unless you wear a hoodie. I rewound and froze the image of him sneering at John D’s crumpled body. The garment hid his face, but it couldn’t hide the small bowling ball of a paunch.
“Nehemiah,” I said. “Why, I’d know your paunch anywhere.”
My first verifiable link between Barsotti and Brother Eldon.
John D pushed himself off his chair and peered at the grainy image.
“Yep, that’s him,” he said. He scratched his grizzled chin.
“I guess he didn’t get the memo from Brother Eldon,” I said. “The one about being polite to you.”
That got a laugh out of John D, then a wince. “You got any idea what these two are up to?”
I thought about that. “Not exactly, but my partner Bill always says that most crimes can be found hunkered behind one of two motives: love or money. Since I truly doubt you’re Nehemiah’s type, I’m choosing money.”
“Okay,” John D said, “but what’s the payoff? Setting aside the hundred bucks I withdrew.”
“Eighty acres,” I said. “The payoff is eighty acres of land. John D, who besides you knows about your plan to donate the land to the Conservancy?”
The First Rule of Ten Page 17
