Bluebird Rising

by John Decure

  Then Max barked from the side yard and the doorbell rang. Dale’s face was suddenly so full of hope that I shuddered as he jerked the front door open. Could it be?

  It couldn’t.

  “Mr. Shepard?” That velvety croak in her voice sounding even better in person than it had on the phone.

  “No, he’s right here,” Dale said with a long, tired face for my newest visitor.

  Kimberley Kirkmeyer-Munson was tall, almost Dale’s height, with soft pink cheeks and enough red curls to fill a pre-Raphaelite portrait. Expensive-looking tailored black pantsuit, gold necklaces and watch, clear fingernails, subtle lipstick. Maybe ten years my senior, but very finely tuned. Her black organizer was cracked open like a menu, three long fingers fanning the page that was tabbed S.

  I shook her hand and did a brief introduction with Carmen and Dale, then led her into the living room, where she met Albert with a strained hi across the room. Albert muttered something of a hello, hugging a throw pillow to his chest as if he wished we’d all just leave him alone. Believe me, pal, I wanted to say, I know the feeling.

  “So,” she said, taking a liberal look around, “where’s my father?”

  Dale was loitering near the door. “I’m … gonna get rolling now,” he said. “I’ll see you later.” Then he slipped out without another word, completing what had to rank as one of the slickest exits ever.

  “Rudy just left,” I said. “The new bride came by a little while ago and got him.”

  Her face was hot. “What? Why didn’t you stop them?”

  “We tried, but he wanted to go.”

  I thought Kimberley was going to chuck her organizer at my forehead. “What do you mean, ‘he wanted’? You said he’s demented!”

  “I might have been wrong. Apparently, he seems just fine when nobody’s looking.” I paused. “And when I told him you were coming this afternoon, his mind seemed to clear. That’s why we had to let him go.”

  “Bastard!”

  I held up a hand. “That really isn’t necessary.”

  Kimberley smirked at me, calming down a shade. “No, not you—I mean him. The manipulative old … Don’t you see? I’m here. He’s got me right where he wants me, and now he’s milking it.” She walked to the front window and looked out at the swaying eucalyptus across the street from my house. “I’m sorry, but Alzheimer’s? Huh.” Turning to face us. “I think you’ve been had by a lonely old fool.” Her curls shook as she sighed. “I think we’ve both been had.”

  Then she laughed without making a sound.

  Nineteen

  Kimberley stared at the coffee table, her eyes searching for something she wasn’t finding. Finally she said, “May I, um, borrow an ashtray?”

  I told her it would be better if we went out to the back patio. Carmen went to the kitchen and fished the big glass pitcher of sun tea out of the refrigerator. I went into the china cabinet and located a gold-rimmed ceramic coffee mug that had Elvis Presley’s handsome young face painted on the side. The message “Long Live the King” was printed beneath the face. Kimberley did a double take when I handed it to her.

  “Thank you.”

  The stone on her outstretched hand could’ve blinded me. Christ, the engagement ring I’d bought Carmen was a carat, but it looked like something out of a Cracker Jacks box compared to this rock.

  Kimberley seemed to be calming down, which was good timing, because my patience was wearing thin, her crack about my being had still ringing in my ears. I had work to do, had to find out who was behind the law center and look into the so-called consulting firms backing the seminars. This business with Rudy and his daughter was beginning to sound like bad blood, a private matter best settled between them alone.

  On the patio I made the obligatory introduction between my guest and Max. “I used to have a dog,” she tittered when the color came back to her face. “He wasn’t anything like this, though. Does he bite?”

  “Only when he’s hungry.”

  Kimberley seemed to get my vibe. Eschewing further chitchat, I watched her put her shades on and light a cigarette. Carmen sat down next to me, handing me a glass of tea.

  “My mother died two years ago,” Kimberley said. “Pancreatic cancer, really sudden thing.” Sucking on her smoke. “Three weeks after they saw it, she was gone. I barely had time to plan the funeral.” She frowned, probably not liking the sound of that, being put out to have to bury your mother. Sitting in the speckled shade of the peppertree, her red hair seemed electrified. “My dad wasn’t prepared for a lot of things. I mean, at all.”

  “You wouldn’t know it from his portfolio,” I said.

  “That was all Mom’s doing. She never worked, but she was a smart lady, grew up in New York City, father was a banker. Graduated from Vassar ages ago. After Dad retired, she knew his retirement wouldn’t be much if they just sat on what they had, so she educated herself in investments.”

  “Rudy didn’t mind her taking over?”

  She shook her head no. “My father never wrote a single check, paid a single bill the whole time they were married, far as I know. Mom was the homemaker, but she handled all the finances, too. Dad’s job was to bring home the bacon, mow the lawn on Saturdays, roll out the cans on trash night.”

  She told us that Rudy was a power-company guy, forty-two years, made a good but modest living, happy with his position and never pushing for promotion.

  “An engineer?”

  “Safety inspector. All the ladders and catwalks, plant lighting, railings, anything that could cause an injury—and a lawsuit—if it wasn’t properly maintained.” She looked away. “He was a glorified hall monitor, if you want to know the truth, but he was also a heck of a witness for the company if a worker sued. He has that … face. You know, the Look. Very innocent.”

  “We know,” Carmen said.

  “What’s this got to do with you?” I asked Kimberley.

  She tilted back her head and stretched her long, freckled neck, purging a smooth jet of smoke. “I think he’s getting back at me for not rescuing him after Mom died. At least, that’s my best guess.”

  “He thought you would take over once she was gone?” I said.

  “I offered to move him up to Seattle with me, but he doesn’t go for the weather up there.” Flicking her ashes into the Elvis cup. “Tried to teach him how to write the bills, balance his checkbook. He took that really personally, and frankly, I got sick of his attitude, you know? I said fine, forget it, wrote to his creditors, got all his basic bills put on automatic debit. The rest I had Mr. Dobbs and the savings and loan handle for a small monthly fee. Dobbs has done such a good job with it, I’d almost forgotten about him until he called.”

  I chugged from my tea and leaned forward. “So what’s the bottom line?”

  Kimberley took her time answering. “You seem to think either he’s fine, or maybe he’s in and out. Well, I say he’s fine. I think he’s just punishing me for having left him alone.” A tear shook loose, then another, and another. “That would be so like him.”

  “But you offered to take him,” Carmen said. “You tried to help.”

  Kimberley wiped her eyes. “That’s true, I did, but not on his terms. My father is a very stubborn man.”

  “You really think he’d go and blow his entire nest egg just to get to you?” I asked.

  Her self-assured manner seemed to be failing her, and she stared up into the peppertree awhile, composing herself, then snuffed out her cigarette, little Elvis smiling on.

  “Honestly?” she said. “I have no idea.”

  When I called Tamango Perry on his cell phone, he was at home doing laundry in his garage, having a beer while he folded clothes.

  “First real break I’ve had all day,” he said, sounding tired.

  “Sorry. If this is a bad time—”

  “No, no, don’t mention it, I was going to call you tonight anyway. I thought you might like to know that my department’s law center investigation is going nowhere so far.”

>   “How is that?” I asked.

  He paused, and I could hear the rumble of appliances behind him. “They took my statement. I don’t know what they’re going to do with me, because I resisted the many suggestions that were made during the interview.”

  “Suggestions?”

  “That you were involved in that fire.”

  “You told the truth.”

  “About both you and Mr. Bleeker. The chief wasn’t happy, but then, he shouldn’t have taken my statement.”

  “Why’d they do it if they knew you’d hurt their case?”

  “They didn’t know what I’d say. It was a test.” I heard him swig his beer. “I suppose you could say I failed.”

  “They’re going to fire you,” I said.

  “We shall see.” A long silence, then he said, “I am not afraid of that.” As if he needed to convince himself.

  “Listen, whatever I can do.”

  The line was silent, and I imagine that Tamango had stopped just to think, such was his deliberate nature. “The best thing you can do, J., is to find out what they’re hiding.”

  I told him that was why I was calling, recounted my conversation with Mr. Carpio, the bakery owner. Then I described the flyers. He reminded me not to forget that the law center had been torched. Somehow, his cop’s instinct was telling him, the arson angle might be important. There was a database the insurance industry used to track suspicious fires and the claims that arose from them.

  “How do I access the database?” I asked.

  “I can’t help you with that,” he said. “I can’t really help you with anything right now, not with my chief watching me so closely.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know much about the insurance business. This was going to be difficult.

  “Can’t you get someone at the bar to help you investigate?” he said after a stretch of silence.

  “There’s something I forgot to mention. I got suspended from work.”

  “Oh.”

  Then I had an idea. “But there is one guy, an investigator. He’s good, too. And he owes me.”

  Duke Choi set down his chiliburger and stared at me, his mouth ajar. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

  “Jeez, Duke.”

  “And you still owe me lunch, it’s still your turn to buy.” Taking another bite out of his burger, the chili dripping out the bottom like mud sliding down a canyon wall. “This doesn’t count.”

  We were at the original Tommy’s on Rampart and Beverly, a place I felt was far enough away from the bar that no one we worked with would see us meeting. Eating our burgers and chugging cans of soda outdoors, standing up beside the chest-high counters that run along the walls of the place. Duke had his maroon knit tie draped over his shoulder so he wouldn’t spatter it with grease. I’d gone casual in jeans and a Hawaiian print today. The air was warm and still and the noonday sun was so exacting that even the bum begging for change on the sidewalk was wearing shades.

  With his weak mustache and a thin-lipped mouth that seems quick to smile, Duke looks more like the register guy at 7-Eleven than an investigator, but he’s smart as hell and a very hard worker. Typically the smallest man in any crowd, Duke once told me he was so runty when he emigrated here as a teen that his Stateside relatives renamed him after John Wayne, thinking that might somehow boost his stature. Apparently it did nothing but identify him as a major pussy who thought he was a cowboy, and guaranteed him a steady share of thrashings on the way to and from school.

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t count?” I said. “These are the world’s greatest hamburgers.” I opened the bun on mine. “Look at the size of this tomato, it’s like a manhole cover.”

  He belched. “Tastes like one too.”

  “Next time we’ll hit that Thai place on Vermont.”

  Duke held up his hand. “Look, whatever you feed me, I can’t get involved in this with you. I looked you up on the AS four hundred this morning.” The AS 400 is the bar discipline unit’s internal computer system. “You’re classified. That means you’re hot. Anyone checking you out will get checked out too.”

  I put down my food. “Know why? I stumbled into that UPL mill in Glendale. Now somebody connected to it wants me out of the way.”

  Duke chewed on his burger and waited. “You know that for a fact?”

  I didn’t know shit at the moment, but Duke didn’t need to know that. “Call it an instinct.”

  He noisily vacuumed the bottom of his orange-soda can with his straw. I thought he was weighing my proposition favorably, until he said, “I don’t want to offend you, buddy, but you kinda gave the bar a bit of a black eye at just the wrong time, right when this disciplinary review committee’s got us under a microscope.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “No, I’m serious. A lot of people we work with think what you did was pretty selfish, taking over that guy’s probation monitoring without your manager’s approval, and …” He shrugged. “You know.”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “Trying to destroy those files.”

  “You don’t believe I would do that, Duke.”

  He smiled. “Course I don’t. But that’s only ’cause I know you.”

  Maybe I blew it by not buying him lunch at a fancier place, but I was getting tired of having my chain jerked. Duke can be persistent, which is good if you’re an investigator, but he can also be obtuse. My plan had been to let him make the decision to assist me freely, but he didn’t seem headed there anytime soon. Duke needed a nudge in the right direction.

  “How’s Lynn?” I asked. “She still living with your folks?”

  Lynn Choi is Duke’s youngest sister, a sweet round-faced girl who met exactly the wrong guy the first year she was in America. He started out as the classic nice-guy boyfriend, very bright, a senior, headed off to college in the fall. The kind who loves puppies and walks on the beach, a patient listener to whom the lonely Lynn gravitated like a magnet. But he had a darker side that wanted to dominate her, and it wasn’t long before her parents began noticing nicks and bruises on their daughter’s face and arms. By the time Duke tried to intervene, the guy had started her on ecstasy and crack, which he was apparently dealing to the privileged punks on campus with a taste for danger and way too much time on their hands.

  I was working on a forgery case with Duke back then, and one morning when he came to my office to help me sort documents, I noticed a ripe shiner under his left eye, a deep scratch on his neck, and a cartoonish bump on his forehead. I said to Duke, I told you, don’t mess with your cat’s food when she’s eating. He erupted in hysterical guffaws that quickly morphed into heavy sobs. I was pretty much taken aback, and my secretary, Honey Chavez, shot me a what-the-hey glance from her cubicle when I got up to shut my door. Then I sat back down and heard Duke’s story.

  He’d gone to see Lynn’s boyfriend, found him at the local bowling alley lounge, where he conducted his business, told him he had a message from his sister, that the two of them were through, end of story, so leave her alone. In short, the message was not well received and Duke was followed out to his car. He tried to defend Lynn’s honor, but he gave up a lot of size to the boyfriend and wasn’t much of a fighter anyway. The goon had stood over Duke, telling him the prom was next week and Lynn better be ready, “’cause we’re gonna party, you know what I mean.” Then he took a piss on Duke while Duke was facedown on the pavement, his eye swelling shut, a couple of the goon’s friends laughing.

  The last detail of Duke’s story really frosted me, and I said so. Next thing you know, he’s asking me—no begging me—to do this one thing for his sister. No way, I said, she’s eighteen, I’m thirty-one, I’ll look like a dirty old man. Well, how else will she ever break away? Duke asked me. A statement needed to be made, a simple one: Don’t fuck with Lynn Choi anymore. He’d tried to make it himself, and failed. Their parents were immigrants, his father nearing sixty and even tinier than he. None of the big-talking relatives were worth a damn in a situation
like this. She was still vulnerable, and Mr. Wrong knew it.

  A week later I squeezed into a rented dinner jacket and took a somewhat bewildered Lynn Choi to her prom. The statement got made, and the live band wasn’t halfway bad, either. That girl could dance.

  Duke frowned. “Lynn’s great, thanks for asking.” Eyeballing me as if I was about to shake him down. “All A’s her first year.”

  “Loyola Marymount, right?”

  “She moved on campus this quarter. Going out for lacrosse.” Dropping his burger wrappers and empty soda into a trash can next to us.

  “I’m happy for her.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “Me too.”

  I flashed him the shit-eater. “No, really, that is wonderful news, Duke. The folks must be proud. She dating anyone special?” Finishing my burger with one final chomp.

  He sighed long and slowly, like an inner tube losing air. “Okay, J., I get the point. Like a goddamned stick in the eye.”

  “Come on, Duke. We’re friends.”

  “Okay okay, just cut it, will you? What do you need me to do?”

  “I’m glad you asked.”

  “Ho boy.”

  I think his burger was giving him indigestion.

  I filled him in on everything I knew, gave him copies of the flyers, told him what Tamango Perry had said about the arson probably being important.

  Duke said, “I know the database he’s talking about, it’s set up by the NICB.” He noticed my blank expression. “Stands for National Insurance Crime Bureau. Any time a building gets torched, they enter data on the insurance claimant, the concerned parties, who the carrier is, losses claimed. The idea is to keep track of who’s claiming what. The true scammers tend to buy their policies all over the map.”

  “What’ll you do about the law center?”

  “That’ll be my starting point. I can go to Glendale, pull the business license, trace ownership on the address, take it from there. I’ll do the same on these consulting outfits, check their slates, the statements of domestic stock on file, articles of incorporation, whatever I can get my hands on. See where it leads me.”