Burning Man

by Alan Russell

  “Some women are like that, but not me. My three pregnancies I was out to here”—Dottie gestured to a spot beyond where her fingers could reach—“and that was after only a few months. I always looked like I was carrying a litter.”

  Dottie provided me with a Sharpie, a stapler, and running commentary while I wrote up the details on my wanted poster and attached my card. When I finished up, I took an appreciative sniff of the air.

  “That pumpkin bread smells great.”

  “It tastes better than it smells,” Dottie said. “Usually it’s all sold out by noon.”

  “I’ll take a loaf then.”

  “You’ll want some of the hand-dipped chocolates as well,” she said, reaching for a box and not giving me any choice in the matter. “There’s never any left over. Today’s your lucky day.”

  “You sure you don’t work on commission?”

  “Bring the chocolates home to your wife and see if I’m not telling it like it is.”

  “I’m not married.”

  Deadpan she said, “With all your charm?”

  She bagged up the chocolates. “A box of chocolates can make a woman forgive a lot of flaws. If you want to catch a mouse, you need the cheese.”

  “I’m a cop, not an exterminator.”

  “These chocolates are so good some woman will even put up with your bad jokes.”

  “Thanks for your help and the million calories.”

  “The nuns made them. How can it be bad for you?”

  I gathered up my goodies. The bag she handed me was surprisingly heavy. By the feel of it, the nuns must have put the Great Pumpkin into my loaf of pumpkin bread. We said our good-byes, but I stopped short of walking out the door. My subconscious was still mulling over why Rose’s mother had come to this spot. Sinners look to repent in different ways. Maybe the pregnant woman hadn’t known where to turn other than God. She might have been so ashamed of her condition that she had considered the need for penance in a big way. I wondered if she had come to the monastery to ask how to go about becoming a nun.

  “Is it possible that our mystery woman could have talked to one of the nuns before she came into the gift shop?”

  Dottie shrugged her shoulders. “Why not? The nuns might be cloistered, but they’re not invisible.”

  “Let’s say she came to the monastery and asked how to become a nun here. Would she have to talk to anyone in particular?”

  “I suppose the prioress. That would be the Reverend Mother Frances.”

  “And you’re sure she’s too busy to talk to me now?”

  “If you’re here about an investigation, I would be more comfortable getting you an appointment with her tomorrow. If you’re here about your own spiritual issues, I am sure she will see you now.”

  “Late afternoon tomorrow would work best for me.”

  Dottie promised to call me in the morning to confirm the time. I thanked her for all her help, but again I couldn’t quite bring myself to leave. Something was still nagging at me.

  “The reverend mother’s name is Frances?”

  I said it as if the name was familiar to me, even though I was pretty sure I didn’t know a single person in the world named Frances.

  “You might have read about her,” Dottie said, looking rather pleased.

  “What? Was she awarded Mother Superior of the Year?”

  “No, the reverend mother experienced a miracle.”

  “How can I top that?”

  “You can’t.”

  CHAPTER 11:

  TOTALLY FUBAR

  For dinner I had the pumpkin bread and most of the chocolates. Both were as tasty as Dottie had promised. I told myself it was a balanced diet, and that I was getting my fruit and vegetables in the pumpkin bread. As it turned out, it was a good night. These days my definition of a good night is when I don’t burn. In the morning my alarm sounded and I got out of bed actually feeling refreshed. That was lucky for me, because today was my day for going back to high school.

  I drove to the coast, making my way to a peninsula known collectively as Palos Verdes, which the locals refer to as PV. Although PV doesn’t have the reputation of Beverly Hills, the beach community is every bit as affluent.

  Palos Verdes High School is only half a block from the beach and sits on some of the most expensive high school real estate in the country. I arrived early enough to take Sirius for a walk along the coast. There was a no-dogs rule on most of the area’s beaches, so my partner and I had to be content to do our walking within sight and sound of the surf.

  After the walk, I picked up a coffee and went to the agreed-upon meet-up spot near the front of the high school. While waiting, I drank my coffee and took in the view. Even over the noise of arriving students, I could hear the sounds of the ocean. PV is less than twenty miles southwest of LA, but it feels like a different world.

  Troy Vincent had told me he didn’t have a class until eight and had agreed to meet with me at half past seven. At twenty of eight, a young man approached drinking a Coke and eating a Slim Jim sausage. He had a deep tan, and his long, wet hair had natural blond highlights from the sun. His garb was beach casual: board shorts, a T-shirt from a local surf shop, flip-flops, and white-framed, smoky-lens sunglasses.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I was out with the dawn patrol and the waves were awesome.”

  He didn’t offer a hand to me but did to Sirius, saying, “How’s it going, Bubba?”

  Sirius casually sniffed the offered hand and then licked it, either for a taste of sea salt or Slim Jim.

  “Where were you surfing?”

  “Haggerty’s,” he said.

  I nodded as if I knew the spot. In truth I had heard of it, but my awareness was limited to oldies radio. Haggerty’s was part of the lyrics in the Beach Boys song “Surfin’ USA.”

  “When we talked yesterday you were reluctant to speak ill of the dead,” I said.

  Troy shrugged. “Why mess with bad karma?”

  “Wouldn’t it be worse karma if you didn’t help, and by doing that someone got away with murder?”

  He took a bite of his Slim Jim, considered my words, and finally offered a shrug and noncommittal nod.

  “Tell me about the lacrosse game where you and Klein went at it.”

  “He was a dude with a ’tude,” said Troy. “He was acting like he was the big kahuna out on the field. During the match there were some infusions going on, you know? That’s part of the game, so when the two of us collided he got all hot and told me I rammed his space. So I told him, ‘Brah, that’s not my way,’ but he still had a pile of sand in his shorts and I could tell he was ready to go aggro. I didn’t back down, though, and told him if he wanted to barnie, then we should do it, but he just gave me the stink eye, or that’s what I thought until a little while later when I got acid-dropped.”

  “You were hit from behind?”

  He nodded. “It was totally fubar.”

  Translation: fucked up beyond all recognition.

  “But you didn’t actually see Paul Klein hit you?”

  “That’s right, which is what made it so nitchen. Instead of manning up, he did a sneak attack and made sure no one was looking. And then he lied about it.”

  “His coach said you coldcocked him.”

  “That’s totally bogus. That dude made up that story.”

  “Did your teams meet up again?”

  “Not on the field. That was one of the last games of the season.”

  “Not on the field?” I asked. “Did something happen off the field?”

  Troy turned his gaze to the Pacific and said, “I’m still not sure if I should narc on him, seeing as he’s dead.”

  I didn’t say anything; I was pretty sure Troy would spill if I was patient. He took a bite of his Slim Jim, pulled the last bit free from the wrapper, and asked, “You think Bubba wants to finish it off?”

  “I have no doubt of that. But I have to share a car with Bubba.”

  “Sorry,” Troy said to Siri
us and finished the last bite, chasing it with his Coke.

  How is it that surfers can eat like that, I thought, and still look so healthy? It wasn’t a question I asked him; bad karma or not, Troy had decided to give up the rest of the story.

  “So, a month or two after lacrosse season’s over someone came to my house late at night and set a surfboard on fire on our front lawn. The board must have been really juiced, because it was flaming everywhere, and our lawn got this huge burn spot.”

  “You think it was Klein?”

  “No doubt, man. He must have soaked some gas in the grass in order to leave me a personal message. Even though the lawn got all charred, you could still make out the letters BH.”

  “I assume a police report was filed?”

  Troy shook his head. “Because of the black patch from the burning surfboard, it took a few days for the letters to show themselves. Before then I was sure this Torrance dude had done the burning because of a run-in we’d had at Rat.”

  Rat was the name of another surfing spot. A surfer friend once told me that Rat wasn’t named for a rodent but was a spot designated by PV surfers as Right After Torrance. Some of the most impassioned territorial disputes in SoCal are between local surfers defending “their” waves.

  “I should have known it wasn’t another dankster, though,” Troy said. “Not even a durfer would set a board on fire. That’s too fubar.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “that’s too fubar.”

  As I was pulling into the parking lot at BHHS, my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number but I did the voice. Dottie Antonelli said, “Hey, Joe Friday, I’ve been doing your secretarial work all morning.”

  The old Michael Gideon, the one before I lost my wife and did my fire walk, had enjoyed repartee. The ghost of Gideon tried to reprise that role. “Just the facts, ma’am,” I said. It either wasn’t a very good Jack Webb imitation, or Dottie chose to ignore Joe’s and my request.

  “So, wasn’t that pumpkin bread as good as I told you?”

  “You’re assuming I even tried it.”

  “I’m assuming you ate the whole thing.”

  She was right, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. “It was very good,” I admitted.

  “Didn’t I tell you it was habit forming?”

  “Don’t you get tired of hearing people groan when you tell them that?”

  With Jersey emphasis she said, “The pot’s calling the kettle black?”

  “You want me to say five Hail Marys?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good. You might as well say five Hello Dollys.”

  “Let’s start with a hello, Dottie. What do you got for me?”

  “You’re in luck is what I got. I just finished talking with Karen Santos. She’s pretty sure she waited on the girl you’re looking for, but you better talk with her yourself, and there’s no time like the present, because Karen’s got the afternoon shift and the reverend mother has agreed to see you today at four thirty. I’m thinking you’ll want to kill two birds with one stone.”

  “You’re thinking for me?”

  “Somebody’s got to do it.”

  “If I see the reverend mother carrying a ruler I’ll probably have posttraumatic stress disorder.”

  “If she scares you silent we should be so lucky. Speaking of lucky, did the chocolates do the trick?”

  “Is that the kind of question you should be asking from a monastery?”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m no nun.”

  “Well, in case you hadn’t heard, a gentleman never tells.”

  “If I was talking to a gentleman, I wouldn’t have asked the question.”

  “Shouldn’t you be selling holy water or something?”

  “You’re right. I’ll be putting a bag together for you, and I’ll make sure to include a Saint Jude medal in your order.”

  Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. Dottie heard me laugh before I hung up on her.

  I put Sirius on a leash and let him accompany me on my walk through Beverly. The presence of the canine didn’t go unnoticed, and I was sure scores of panicked texts were being sent that a drug-sniffing dog was on campus.

  Once again I reported to the assistant principal. Mrs. Durand surprised me by acting as if she was glad to see me, but the presence of Sirius had something to do with that. Without my partner at my side, people don’t recognize me. I am Frick without Frack.

  “I kept thinking there was something about you that was familiar,” she said. “You’re the policeman that captured the Weatherman.”

  “Two officers made the arrest,” I said. “Meet Sirius.”

  On cue the mutt wagged his tail and the assistant principal suddenly acted starstruck. Long ago I had gotten used to having third billing behind Ellis Haines and Sirius. One of the secretaries in Media Relations had once told me that there had been more than a thousand requests for “signed” pictures of Sirius, which was about a thousand more than there’d been for signed pictures of me. What the public doesn’t know is that the department used some other dog’s paw to ink the pictures. They better hope that news doesn’t leak out. When baseball fans learned that most of Mickey Mantle’s autographs were forged by the Yankees’ clubhouse trainer, they were ready to riot. It was blackmail I was holding over Sirius. Say it ain’t so, Joe.

  “I was hoping you could send for Jason Davis,” I said, “and that the two of us could chat in the conference room.”

  Instead of raising objections, Mrs. Durand said that would be no problem and then asked if Sirius needed a water bowl. I considered saying my partner preferred coffee but swallowed my sour grapes and told her that would be nice. What can I say? I was second fiddle but I still had my part to play.

  When Jason Davis appeared five minutes later, he looked none too pleased to see either Nero or me. He sat in a chair across from me, slouched down, and waited for me to speak. I decided to get his attention.

  “Jason Davis,” I said, “you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in court. You have the right to consult with an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning. If you desire, the court will appoint you an attorney at no cost. Do you understand those rights?”

  My words had made Davis sit up straight. His eyes were wide, and his response was high-pitched and incredulous: “Are you arresting me?”

  “That depends.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “Believe it.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “You’ve obstructed justice. You purposely didn’t tell the full story of Klein’s bullying. Maybe that’s understandable because you were part of his gang and didn’t want to look bad yourself.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not how it is. Like I told you, we never were a gang. Our group might have said a few things to a few people, but that’s all.”

  “You threatened violence and you committed vandalism.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you remember your trip to Palos Verdes? What was the Agency trying to do, pay homage to a KKK cross burning?”

  Davis raised both his hands and started waving them as if trying to push away my words. “It wasn’t anything like that. It was a surfboard, and that was Paul’s thing. If you don’t believe me, ask David Popkin or Cody Schwartz. All we did was drive with Paul.”

  “I will ask them. Everything you say I am going to personally check out. And that’s why if you don’t tell me the complete truth you will have reason to regret it.”

  Davis started wringing his hands and nodded. For the moment at least he’d lost his teenage insouciance and looked like a scared kid.

  “How long has the bullying been going on?”

  He sank back down in his chair and said, “I don’t know. I guess maybe since junior high.”

  I pushed a piece of paper his way. “I’ll need you to make a list of your favorite targets over those years.”

  “H
ow do you expect me to remember everybody?”

  “If you want, I can put you in a cell so that you can have as much time as you need to think about it.”

  “Look, I’ll do my best.”

  “You better. I don’t care how long it takes you—I want a complete list.”

  Davis took up the pen and started writing. I sat there staring at him. It took him about fifteen minutes, but he came up with eleven names. Klein and the Agency had been busy. Seven of the names on his list looked to be Persian.

  “There are a lot of Persians on your list.”

  “There are a lot of Persians in Beverly Hills.”

  “They seem to have been singled out.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “You just went along with whatever Paul wanted?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You ever heard the word ‘Brownie’?”

  “Look, it’s not like I’m a practicing Jew.”

  “But you’ve heard the word directed at Persian Jews?”

  He nodded.

  “Did Paul or your group commit any hate crimes?”

  “We didn’t do anything besides hassle a few kids.”

  “We know that Paul took out Troy Vincent on the lacrosse field. Did he commit any other acts of violence?”

  Davis shook his head.

  “Someone murdered Paul and then crucified him. That’s not a crime of passion. That’s something premeditated. Who could have hated Paul that much?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I studied him, hoping he was lying, but he seemed to be telling the truth.

  CHAPTER 12:

  APPROVED BY THE VATICAN

  The shadows were already coming home to roost when I took my leave of Gump and Martinez. The two detectives would be making calls and trying to connect dots until well into the evening. No one had said it, but our efforts were beginning to feel like busy-work. The three of us had even resorted to sifting through the so-called leads called into Adam Klein’s reward hotline. We needed a break—or divine intervention. Such were my thoughts as I set out for the monastery.