The Feral Detective

by Jonathan Lethem

  “No one even tried?”

  “Solitary Love picked me out. He had a sense of . . . ritual.”

  Inside the shame at hearing that name, I felt a sudden fury at her stupidity. “Do you realize how lucky you are?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I ever find out you’re relying on a sense of ritual or any other mystical horseshit to protect you from men like that, I’m going to find you and strangle you myself, you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you on Baldy when the kids were killed?” The Nancy Drew part of me needed to see if she understood the question. The big-sister part no longer cared to protect her from the fact of what I’d seen.

  “No, but I heard about it.”

  “There was a girl named Sage with you,” I suggested.

  “Yes, I remember her.”

  “Was she a friend of the kids on the mountain? The ones who died?” I only looked like what I’d been, a single neurotic with a favorite café. My real self hovered indefinitely over scenes of madness. My civilian body was secretly a drone-operator’s station, housing for a remote eyeball crawling over terrain, pits of slag, stone arroyos, high-altitude clearings amid pine.

  “Sage was like me,” Arabella said. “She was new. We had just met the desert people.”

  “The two who died weren’t new?” I wasn’t sure I understood.

  “They’d already been to the desert. I guess your friend Heist helped them escape.”

  “They didn’t want to be Rabbits or Bears?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, too bad, since they died as them.” I spoke with cruelty, as though the cruelty I’d seen was inside me now and had to come out.

  Arabella flinched, though she didn’t cry. But I believed her then, that she hadn’t been at the scene. It might only have been rumor to her. I let her sit with confirmation of the rumor for a long moment before I continued.

  “What do the Bears want on the mountain?”

  Even as I posed the question, I knew. The answer had been buried in Spark’s boyfriend’s datura monologues, his Bearsplanation. He’d even said it was hidden in plain sight, but I hadn’t seen it, not until now. The Bears didn’t want something on the mountain, they wanted the mountain itself. It was high and defensible ground, their Davos redoubt.

  “They talked like they’re employed up there,” said Arabella, shrugging again. “Like, providing security, I guess, for the Koreans.” She was telling me what she knew, but I knew more now. The compound’s owners had struck a fatal bargain on Baldy, maybe something like the error the Rolling Stones had made in hiring the Hells Angels to provide security at Altamont. Invited in, the Bears had seen something they’d wanted, something they were convinced they needed in the coming flood. Years of dreaming about the end of the world had met the paranoia of the Korean survivalists and taken it as urgent dispatch, a call to action. Only the urgency was exaggerated. The Bears were dying hippies, like the downer Shockley, convinced the world was dying with them.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Stay with her until it’s okay for me to leave.”

  Maybe there was datura seed extract in the lattes at Iris Café, or maybe I was just synaptically yawned open now, prone to revelation. Caffeine was a good enough drug. I thought I’d gone to Upland to rescue Arabella, but I had it backward. I’d fetched Arabella in order to place Roslyn in her care, not the other way. The thought reminded me of the theory, circulating lately, that early humans hadn’t so much domesticated wild dogs as been domesticated by them.

  “Go where?” I asked her. “Back to the Rabbits?”

  “I doubt it. I might go to Canada. There’s somebody I met who split and went to Halifax. They have good music there.”

  “I still love your singing.”

  “Or a Greek island, I haven’t decided.”

  “Leonard Cohen, huh?”

  She shrugged.

  “I don’t care if you call yourself Phoebe.”

  “It’s not, like, the weirdest thing I ever did.”

  “I didn’t say it was.” I was distracted by something outside the window, in the sky: a jet contrail. How many messages unfurled over New York each hour, unread?

  “What are you going to do about Charles?” said Arabella.

  She’d surprised me. It wasn’t that I’d emptied myself of intentions. I just didn’t think they were written all over my face. Maybe Arabella had read it in a passing contrail.

  “Go back and find him, of course,” I said.

  Part VI

  Mountain, Wash, Desert

  46

  WHEN NOLAN HANDED ME THE KEYS AND TOLD ME THE CAR HADN’T MOVED, I asked if he was sure—had he been watching it the whole time? He didn’t seem to get the joke. Maybe he had been watching it the whole time, neglecting his flagstone sweeping. Anyway, my suitcase was where I’d left it, in the trunk. I tried not to consider the late fees I was racking up on the rental.

  The souped-up green Econoline was back, parked at the far side of the lot from my car. I almost asked Nolan about it, but thought better of it. It wasn’t his—on my earlier visit to the Zendo I’d observed it missing, while he’d stayed put.

  “You mind if I change?” I asked him.

  “Change is the only certainty.”

  “Now you’re making fun of me, Nolan.”

  Seeing my open suitcase in the open trunk, he widened his hands and smiled, to say feel free.

  “I mean inside, not out here. I’m a shy girl.”

  “Mi Zendo es su Zendo.”

  I went inside and traded Roslyn’s Eileen Fisher slacks for jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, anything to make myself more typical where I was going. Then I thanked Nolan and returned to the lot.

  The van’s rear doors were open to the woods behind the fence.

  47

  THE VAN LOOKED DIFFERENT TO ME, NOT BECAUSE IT HAD CHANGED, but because I saw it with new eyes. The large tires, the high clearance on the suspension: a desert vehicle, a rock climber. Its panels wore a layer of fine yellow dust, nothing to do with the mountain.

  The figure sitting cross-legged in the shade of the van’s rear was cherubically rotund, in loose garb that could pass for robes. In silhouette, which was all I could make out through the tinted glass of the door’s square window, I might have taken it for a gigantic sculpture of the Buddha, something being shifted from one of the Zendo’s porches or gazebos. But between the doors, along the top of the wooden bumper, I saw a hairy fat Caucasian ankle taper into a running shoe. Neither ankle nor running shoe belonged to the Buddha.

  Did the figure’s head turn my way?

  I’d failed to press Arabella on the topic of the older man whom the daft girl Sage had mentioned, the possible procurer of young bodies up and down this mountain. Was I seeing him now?

  I memorized the plate, then got into the rental and drove down the hill to the Mount Baldy Lodge to call the police.

  48

  I’D ALREADY BEEN PLANNING THE CALL. IT WAS ONE OF THE ONLY MOVES I arrived certain of, after scheming my way through two airports. I wanted to discharge my obligation to the bodies in the pit, to put their lonely deaths on the road to discovery by grieving parents, inflicting the horror I’d feared bringing home to Roslyn. It wasn’t better than anything but the alternative: that no one would find them for so long that no one still searched, or worse, so long that no one could recognize what they’d found.

  But I wanted to do it without enmeshing myself. The lodge still kept a pay phone, to oblige day visitors whose cells didn’t work. I didn’t know if the Upland police were so vigilant or competent they’d trace the call, but I figured it was best if it came from the mountain. I had to wait awhile for a table near the phone to clear out. Meanwhile, I found a spot from which I could watch the roadway, in case the van appeared. There might be a back door off the mountain, but this was the popular route.

  It took a couple of false starts before I was on the phone with anyon
e really focused, but I eventually got their attention by saying I needed to report a double homicide. The cop asked my name and I refused. “I live on Baldy. I don’t want any trouble. I’m just a regular hiker who found something.”

  I explained that the trail was fenced and posted; they’d need a warrant, unless they wanted to send someone up quietly, to confirm what I’d seen. “The owners are absentees. It’s a survivalist compound, if you ask around you’ll hear. Everyone around here goes up there anyway.” I thought of frozen prints and reminded myself to trash the boots I’d worn on the hike.

  Then I gave them the van’s license plate, and described it as a green Econoline with wooden bumpers. I didn’t mention the yellow dust. The cop fished for more but I said I was done. I could have pointed them to the desert, of course, to the trail that connected the runaways and rescuees of the Viscera Springs tribes to Upland and Baldy, but I needed to stay a step ahead. Let them have the mountain and the van for now. I needed the desert to myself, to get Heist out. Any killers among the Bears had waited long enough for punishment; they could wait a bit longer. That was, besides the punishment the Bears inflicted on themselves, or that which the Rabbits sporadically meted out, as in the case of Shockley.

  49

  TWO DAYS BEFORE, THE DAY OF THE RABBITS’ DANCE FOR PEACE AND Justice, Donna and Anita had driven me and Arabella across the hills in the dune buggy. We still reeked of bonfire, of the juniper and mania proudly seething through our pores. They took us not to Heist’s Jeep—pointless, when no one had the key—but to a site called Giant Rock where they said there’d be enough traffic for us to hitch a ride. I still had my purse, but my phone’s battery had gone dead from chasing signal where there was none.

  From among the day-trippers visiting Giant Rock we’d cadged a ride to the Twentynine Palms Highway, as the Rabbit matriarchs had predicted. In Joshua Tree, I found an ATM. From there, a local cab was willing to run us to the airport in Ontario, more than an hour away. The cabbie didn’t stop talking, which didn’t stop us leaning into each other and sleeping, which didn’t end his talk. Arabella and I woke groggy and startled at the terminal curb, our mouths glued like morning-after drunks.

  Jessie had stayed behind. Spark took him.

  Charles Heist and I had left dogs and vehicles scattered everywhere in our spree. Now, on my return to the scene, it was cleanup time. While waiting for my luggage at the carousel I’d already called the rental place in Montclair, scheduling an exchange of the car for a desert-ready Jeep. I tried to keep myself on an efficiency basis, my actions clean and unsentimental, so I didn’t dwell on Heist, on fantasies of rescue, more than was useful. I didn’t have to—I was headed straight for him, even if I hadn’t a clue how.

  50

  THERE WASN’T ANY SIGN OF LIFE AT HEIST’S OFFICE AT THE BUILDING ON Foothill, but when I steered the Jeep through the maze of mobile homes to the Airstream at the back ridge of nowhere, I found her inside, as some part of me had been certain I would. She wasn’t as filthy-looking as the first time I’d seen her, not quite. Her hair was pulled back from her face and she wore an oversize L.A. Clippers T-shirt over her leggings, but her eyes were just as furtive, her movements still darting, sidelong, like when she’d startled me emerging from a cabinet. The furry girl, Melinda.

  I’d had to work to retrieve her name, behind those of the many Rabbits in whose company I’d been marooned in the days preceding—Lorrie, Anita, and the rest. It was reasonable to guess she’d been raised by Rabbits, but Melinda didn’t feel like one to me. The Rabbits, young or old, whether I’d liked or distrusted them, seemed to float in the weightlessness of their collective proposition—even an outrider like Spark. Melinda, by contrast, was like a coal that had fallen from the sky, completely singular, still burning. She wasn’t pretending to be the feral thing she was—she had no choice. She was like Heist himself, or anyway that’s how she struck me now, in his Airstream with the two remaining dogs. It was incredible that such broken things would presume to care for one another, yet it was also the way of the world. And now here I’d appeared, to add myself to the collection.

  I said her name, and she allowed me to come in. It helped, I think, that Miller and Vacuum were so glad to see me. Their back halves blurred, working like outboard motors. I glanced away from the bed, not wanting to remember. Instead I snogged awhile with the dogs on the Airstream’s tiny floor. Melinda stood to one side, nearly in the shower, watching me. Then she said, “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know exactly. The Bears took him away.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I want company,” I said flatly. “I have a Jeep. I’m going in to find him if I can. The dogs can help me.”

  She didn’t speak, just glared.

  “You’re welcome to come along.” She surely knew the lay of the land better than I did, if she was capable of sharing what she knew. But I wouldn’t presume. Heist’s camper was like a larger version of the cabinet in which she’d been hiding when I first visited his office—a nook of consolation for what she suffered: autism, agoraphobia, or simply a righteous certainty that the world was fucked. I could relate to practically any of it.

  “They need food,” she replied, ignoring my invitation.

  “I’ll get them some.”

  “I do too.”

  “He didn’t leave you food money?”

  “The money’s gone.”

  “That’s not a problem,” I told her. “We can eat now, before we go.”

  It wasn’t so long before dark, in the diminished January light. I didn’t want to wait overnight. The police were in motion now, thanks to me. Not so long ago their missing persons division had directed me to the social worker Jane Toth, who’d sent me to Heist, and it wasn’t too hard to imagine this sequence could work in reverse, culminating here at the Airstream. Meanwhile, for Heist, every minute might count. Who knew what next ceremonies awaited him? I imagined driving by night to the desert’s edge, the girl and the dogs asleep in the rear seat. If I appeared at Viscera Springs at dawn, I might gain some advantage of surprise.

  My own need for sleep I pushed off the table. I’d slept a bit on the red-eye, and there was always coffee or Mormon tea brewing somewhere. Really, I was full of bluff, but I needed to be.

  “What do you want?”

  “The dogs like In-N-Out burgers.” She didn’t mention her own preferences. Still, I felt the dawning of her willingness to be beguiled into my vehicle. The prospect seemed marvelous and improbable. I’d begun to fix on the magical notion that by a law of similarities, Melinda could function as a dowsing rod to locate Charles Heist.

  “Great,” I said, swiftly finding the nearest In-N-Out on my phone. It was just a half mile down Foothill. “We’ll drive through.”

  “Okay, but it has to be animal style.”

  “What’s animal style?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Fifteen minutes later we gorged in the In-N-Out lot, the dogs in the back seat, Melinda in the passenger spot, all snarfing up massive, sopping burgers. Animal style turned out to be an order from the restaurant’s so-called secret menu, consisting of patties drenched in pickles, mustard, and Thousand Island dressing. I got through half of mine and then passed it back to the dogs. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the thing, but I needed to stay awake on the highway—I wasn’t betting on Melinda for a conversationalist.

  “How’d the dogs develop this taste for In-N-Out?” I asked her, after gathering up the slimy wrappers and cardboard trays. It was plain I’d be sacrificing the cleaning deposit on the rental Jeep.

  She made a shrugging face without moving her body. “We walked down here. When the money ran out, we could find plenty to eat in the trash.”

  “I guess you would in a place like this. You could even hold out for animal style, I bet.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You ready for this drive?” I asked her. “You need a . . . potty break?”

  “I’m fine.” Then the girl surpr
ised me. “The desert is big.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Things move around there,” she said.

  “Things?”

  “The Bears hide.” She was thinking about my plan, or lack thereof.

  “I’ll find them somehow.” I didn’t want to tell her she’d become the better part of my plan, if not the whole of it—that her capacity for dwelling at peripheries and moving at odd angles made me believe she could command the secret landscape. She was just a kid.

  “Somehow how?”

  “I know where there’s a Bear. Can you get me to Neptune Lodge?”

  “Sure. Neptune Lodge is easy. It doesn’t move around like everything else.”

  “Then we’ll go there and take their Bear. If we have him, he’ll lead us to the others.” Would I be able to get Shockley into the Jeep? Or did I mean I’d be wheeling his hospice bed across the dunes? These problems I’d solve when I came to them.

  “We should do something else.” She spoke so laconically it took me a moment to understand I should ask.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a Bear right here. He’s not really one anymore.”

  “Where?”

  “He lives in the Wash.”

  Again, I knew without realizing I knew. “Is he called Laird?”

  “Yeah. Laird’ll help us. He loves Charlie.”

  These words opened a little sore place in my chest that I didn’t want to attend to just then. The name, Charlie, shorn of Shockley’s insinuating boy, suddenly sounded real to me. Maybe I’d call him that someday.

  “Should we go talk to him?” The uptorn fence, entrance to the Wash, was close. We might have an hour of daylight still. L.A.’s subliminal winter had shifted again, from an afternoon sun that had me sweating in my winter coat to a bone-dry chill, sun bowing toward the rumored ocean, breeze whistling to magic-hour hills in the direction we’d be going.

  She nodded, then surveyed the Jeep’s interior as if measuring it. “I can sit in the back with the dogs.”