“I wouldn’t be happy if I was covering up a murder.”
“Oh my. Don’t you coppers lean toward melodrama.”
“A man named Tim Algernon was burned to death Monday morning in Laguna. No melodrama. The guy who did it checked into a hotel an hour later. But he had a visitor before I got there. The visitor was your Mr. Harmon, but he didn’t bother to use his real name. And since he says he’s engaged by an attorney, that’s all he’ll tell me. Anybody with air in his lungs could tell there’s more.” The ice clinked again and Shephard heard Marla Collins gulp.
“I don’t know how much air I’ve got left, but I do have a job. That’s not all bad.”
“I can pay you a little.”
“You missed the point by half a mile. The point is that people have a right to do legal work, right? I mean, what if Bruce is on the up and up?”
“Then that’s where it will end. I was hoping you could tell me that I’m wasting my time. Maybe he’s got a legitimate concern. Tell me he does. Make me happy.”
There was a long pause at the other end. Shephard heard the crackle of a match being struck close to the receiver.
“You know, Shephard, and bear in mind that this is a bottle of Zinfandel and a stiff vodka talking, I must say that I’m a little disappointed in your call. I thought that maybe this Randy Cox thought plain little Marla had her charms.”
“Maybe he did.”
Another long pause. “Sorry. I say things I shouldn’t when I’m pissed. Do them, too.”
“And regret them?”
“Sometimes I take the chance. I’d take it tonight. Busy?”
“Somebody just took the same chance and she looked a little bad when she walked away. That might make a difference to us both.”
“If you mention it, it does. Look, Shephard. Call me back sometime. I’ll think about it. I’m not in the business of biting the hand that feeds me. Tell the truth, I’m not sure if I like you or not.”
“Neither am I. But I am sure that Bruce Harmon has been a few places he didn’t belong. He seems to show up close on the heels of dead people. You can tell me who pays him to do it.”
Shephard could hear her draw on a cigarette. When her voice came back, it was thin and smoke-filled.
“He’s such an ass,” she said flatly. “Nothing surprises me any more.” He thought she was about to talk, but she offered only a quick cheerio and hung up.
At eleven o’clock he watched the rerun of his father’s Sunday sermon on Wade’s TV channel, KNEW. The service was unorthodox by denominational standards, a Church of New Life trademark. First, a gospel rock group called The Word took the stage and launched into a country-and-western ballad based on the life of Christ. The church cameramen moved in and out for close-ups, fades, montage shots of the band, and intercut them with frequent moves to the audience. Shephard studied the faces. They were young and healthy, attentive to the music. The camera found a young mother and her infant, whom she was rocking gently to the beat of the song.
Three songs later the band left the stage and his father strode on, dressed as always in a light suit and white shirt, open at the collar. His hair shone silver in the bright lights, his face was flushed, rosy, alive. He took his place behind a modest pulpit and raised his hands for the applause to stop. When it did, he smiled into the camera and studied the faces before him.
“When I look out to your faces I see the power of the Lord at work,” he intoned. “Praise Him!”
“Praise the Lord,” his audience shouted back.
He smiled again, then leaned forward and looked at someone in the first row. “Very few of us here this morning really know each other,” he began. “I see husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, good friends. But of the thousand people in this temple now, all worshipping Him, how many do you really know?” He searched the audience as if trying to answer the question for himself. “I would think that no one here today truly knows more than two or three of the people sitting in this House of God.” Then quietly: “I know I don’t.”
He leaned back, looked down in front of him, then back up to the cameras. “I heard a joke the other day about a person from Poland. And one the day before that about a person from Mexico. And one about a Jewish man, one about a salesman, one about a black. You have heard the same jokes. These jokes get laughter, don’t they? Do you think they are funny? I have to confess that I sometimes do, until I stop for just a moment to examine why. Do you know why we laugh? We laugh because jokes like these give us the chance to share one of our most common traits. A trait that many of us have in abundance, and all of us have in some small measure at least. Ignorance. We delight in sharing our own ignorance of other people.
“When we laugh at these jokes, we are not laughing at the Polish man, or the Jewish person, or the traveling salesman. We do not know them. We do not know the person in the joke. And to relieve ourselves of that duty, we accept the joke and believe that one race or type of person is lazier, dumber, more penurious than another. This, my friends, is what passes for funny. And this, my friends, is ignorance.”
Wade leaned back, then turned and lifted his palm in the direction of the cross behind him. The camera lingered on it, then returned to him.
“Jesus knew these people. He told us to love them as we love ourselves. Jesus would not have laughed. Jesus saw the soul. And knowing that we could not do as He did, He offered us simple advice: ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged.’ ”
Shephard watched his father lean forward and study the faces in front of him. The smile was gone, replaced by an expression of challenge.
“Many years ago, before I knew the Lord, I was walking down a street in Laguna Beach. I saw a man walking toward me. He was old and his clothes were tattered and his beard was long and stained. So when he veered in my direction, I told myself I knew this man. I had seen many like him, in many cities around the world, men with the same thirsty look in their eyes. Men who had given up on the world. Men who found their peace in a bottle. And because I was young and brash, and knew everything about the world, I told myself I would trick him. So when he stopped in my path and opened his mouth to speak, I spoke first. I said, ‘Buddy, can you spare a quarter for a little wine?’ ”
Wade chuckled. His audience chuckled, too, uneasily. He pushed forward again on the podium. “He looked at me, surprised, I thought, that I had beaten him at his own game.
Then he rummaged through his pockets and brought out a quarter and a booklet. And he said to me, ‘Take this, too, young man, and read it while you drink the wine.’ It was a small, worn booklet containing the sayings of Jesus Christ, who in the beginning said, ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged.’
“And I will tell you, I felt small. Small and ignorant and foolish. So, when I see someone I do not know, or hear a joke about someone I do not know, or hear rumors about someone I do not know, I think back to that day and see that old man’s face as he offered me the quarter and the sayings of Jesus. Judge not, judge not and you will not have to worry about being judged yourself.”
Shephard got a beer from the refrigerator, then flipped to the eleven o’clock news, where he saw himself standing in the harsh lights of the conference room, droning through his opening remarks. He looked nothing like the man on KNEW: his face was a sickly white and a glaze of sweat shone on his forehead. There was no life in his voice, it could have been the fabrication of a computer.
The anchorman’s voice sounded over his own: “In an interesting sidelight to this story, it was the same Detective Tom Shephard in charge who recently resigned from the Los Angeles Police Department after the fatal shooting of a black youth last year. That killing was the twelfth last year by LAPD officers.…”
As he spoke, the conference footage gave way to a grainy, late night recording of the Mumford scene. Shephard watched as two officers carried the body toward a waiting van, its red lights pulsing. In the background was Morris’s home, and somehow the news crew had rounded up his father and mother, who stood on the
sidewalk where their son had fallen, staring at the camera while a reporter pressed a microphone toward them. The woman wept uncontrollably while the man, his eyes wide with sadness, tried to explain that Morris was just a kid.
“Detective Shephard, thirty-two, had this to say when questioned about living with the stress of a fatal, officer-involved shooting,” the newsman continued, and the footage changed back to the Laguna police conference room, where Shephard stared stupidly into the camera and asked, “Fears and doubts? Sure, I’ve got the same—”
He flipped the channel back to his father’s sermon and uncapped the beer. Wade was talking about the inner life and how the person who is beautiful on the outside can harbor a “heart of sickness,” while the person with a diseased body can harbor “a heart of truth and beauty.”
Shephard gulped down the beer and applied Wade’s theory to Wade. Did he know his father? Maybe. Did he understand him? Maybe not. He thought back to the man whom he had grown up with, the cop who drank hard and came home at night to roam the house mournfully as if it were a city gutted by plague. Somehow, young as he was, Shephard had thought he understood. His father was simply looking for someone who was no longer there. Just as he was. Just as he had sometimes wondered what his mother’s hair felt like, or the sound of her voice.
And he had understood the man who would disappear for long weekends fishing in the mountains and never come home with fish. Shephard understood that it was the mountains that drew him, not the fish. He had known the man who attacked everything he did with a terrible intensity, the Wade who had painted a strike zone on the garage door for his son to pitch against, then bludgeoned the door full of holes with a baseball bat when the zone came out crooked. He had known the man who walked purposefully down the center of the pier once a month and fell off into the darkness without so much as a look beneath. Somehow, he had even understood this: Wade was simply trying to lose himself. Shephard had even emulated this strange midnight ritual. He thought of those nights when his father left “for a walk,” and he would start up his small motorcycle, crisscrossing his way out Laguna Canyon Road, forcing the oncoming traffic to careen out of his way, to screech in panic stops.
It made sense. Lose oneself. Was it finally to find oneself, as Dr. Zahara said?
And he understood the Wade Shephard who had taken him out to dinner the night before he left for the Police Academy in Los Angeles. Wade had drunk profusely and encouraged Tom to follow. They obliterated their own good sense by ten, and by midnight, sitting in the corner of a noisy Laguna Beach saloon, his father had taken on that glazed look of a drinker who simply cannot put himself under. The elusive wave of darkness wouldn’t find him. And at exactly 1 A.M.—Shephard had looked at his watch for some reason just before it happened—Wade’s face had drained of color, his eyes had widened as if someone had just put a match to his foot, and he had slumped forward, knocking the small table and its drinks onto the floor.
He understood: it had been coming all night.
But the face on the screen belonged to a different animal, Shephard thought. It was fuller, and his smile had blossomed into a happy, generous gleam. His eyes were wider, and clear. The expression on the Reverend Wade Shephard’s face said, “I’m here, take me, I will be of help to you.” Even his voice had changed.
Shephard searched that face for answers. Were the dark eyes of Wade the Cop simply searching for what Wade the Reverend had found? Was the monthly jump from the pier only a preparation for the leap of faith? Was the anger a pathway to patience?
Shephard thought back to the first and only time that Wade had told him about the death of Colleen. It was early evening and he was in his room, thinking of the next day, his first day of school. He was counting dust specks in a shaft of sunlight that slanted through the window. Wade came in and sat quietly on the bed, his face grave and dark. He held a newspaper clipping, which he stared at for a long moment before he spoke. Then he told Tom that his mother was dead, as he knew, and that she had been killed by a man with a gun. The man’s name was Azul Mercante and he had broken into their house when Colleen was alone. He had tried to take advantage of her in a way that men could do to women. But his father had come home and fought with Azul, who used the gun on Colleen before Wade could stop him. Azul had gone to prison, and would be there for many years. Fingering the news clipping with a trembling hand, Wade had showed it to his son. Too young to read, Shephard had merely looked at the pictures, one of his mother and one of his father. Wade explained that Colleen was safe and warm in heaven, where good people go. If other children in kindergarten talked of their mothers, then Tom would have to understand that he could not. This was nothing to be ashamed of. All he needed to know was that Colleen had loved him more than anything else in the world and she always would. Shephard had nodded and understood: after all, it was rather simple, wasn’t it? His father hugged him, and hid his face as he walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.
He had happened across the news article and photos a year later, but shut the drawer quickly when he saw what was in it. His father’s explanation was enough. She was safe and warm in heaven where good people go. Besides, he had thought of her from time to time, and built an image of her, a voice, a feeling. At times, he knew she was nearby, looking in through a window perhaps, or somewhere under the bed, making sure that he was all right. And as warm and substantial as Wade was, when Shephard cried with the pain or humiliation that only the young can feel so desperately, it was always Colleen’s breast that took his tears. She was there, he knew it. She just was not the kind of mother you could see.
And twenty-five years later, as he sat in the living room of his naked apartment, he felt her presence still. A sensation from something no longer there, from a phantom limb, from the ghost who had given him life.
He had nearly dozed off when the phone rang. It was Jane Algernon.
“I didn’t mean to be short,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean it that way. You made me look at myself. You made me feel something again. Thank you, Tom Shephard. And I want you to know I’ll do what I can to help you. I owe it to whoever else might be next. Maybe I even owe it to you.”
“Don’t try to do too much. You can get too close to things sometimes.”
“I’ve spent most of my life trying to stay far away.”
Shephard pondered her words. What a strange, fine thing it was, to be called on the telephone. He wondered what to say, and had just settled on sleep well tonight, Jane, when she put the phone back in its cradle.
SEVENTEEN
He had almost passed the darkened booth in Kano’s when a cigarette lighter clicked and a long orange flame coaxed the face of Dorothy Edmond from the shadows. Shephard sat down and found himself surrounded by the smell of smoke and lilac perfume. Her face was made up cadaverously. The deep lines that had shown up so clearly in the sunlight were now buried in powder; the red-rimmed gray eyes were framed in a glittery makeup that caught the light of the table candle; her full lips had been painted an unnatural violet. And the gray-black hair that had dangled nearly to her shoulders on the Surfside dock was now hidden beneath a lavender scarf that was pinned on one side by a diamond cluster. Shephard settled into the overly luxuriant booth. The restaurant seemed barely living: a man in a dark suit hunched over a drink at the bar, while near the window a young couple sat with their backs to the lounge, silently watching the ships bobbing in the harbor.
A waitress appeared. Dorothy Edmond tapped her empty glass with a pale, jewel-heavy hand, and Shephard ordered a beer. As she turned to watch the waitress leave, Shephard noted the handsome profile of her lined face. Beautiful, he thought, and corrupted. Like obscenities in Spanish. Her black dress was cut low enough to reveal a withering, sundried cleavage. She brought her hand to her mouth and quelled a rattling, phlegmy cough.
“That cough is my best friend, detective. We go everywhere together.” As she studied him, Shephard felt like a slave being inspected by a prospective buyer.
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br /> “Joe wasn’t too happy to see us talking,” he said finally.
“Joe isn’t happy about anything he can’t control,” she answered, as if it were an aside to be dispensed with quickly. “You probably noticed that he plays tennis without a partner. Fewer surprises, and only one winner.”
The drinks arrived and Shephard reached for his pocket, but Dorothy cut him off. “We’re on a tab,” she said. “I’d wear a hole in that pretty young hand of yours if we weren’t.” The waitress laughed with the forced enthusiasm reserved for good tippers. When she had gone again, Dorothy sipped her drink—Shephard noted that it was straight gin—then coughed into her hand. “Are you happy?” Her voice was raw and low and she asked the question as if everything that would follow depended on his answer.
“Reasonably. I got divorced last summer and pistol-whipped last Monday, but I’m a strong finisher.”
“Trifles,” she decided after a long pause. “It doesn’t really matter because you’ll be less happy when you leave here, and less happy than that later. Welcome to the club.”
“Are my dues current?”
Dorothy Edmond set down her glass and shot him an inhospitable glance. “Don’t be glib, young man. And understand two things before we go any farther. One is that I’ll tell you nothing that isn’t true. The other is I’ll tell you nothing I don’t want to. We can get along as two people helping each other, or you can heave your bureaucracy at me. But it won’t work. I don’t mind hell, I’ve been there.”
Before Shephard could form a reply, the woman’s face contorted and her hand shot up with a handkerchief in it. The cough exploded as she turned her head away.
“Bless you,” he said.
“Yes, God bless Dorothy.” She pulled a long cigarette from a silver box on the table and Shephard lit it. “I’m going to tell you a little story, detective. When it’s over, I might entertain a question or two like you did on TV last night. Until then, you just listen.
Laguna Heat Page 17
