When his turn finally came, Shephard was stretched out on a cool white table, where he was X-rayed, bathed, and after an inexplicable wait of an hour, stitched shut. By then, the city’s mayor had arrived to regard Shephard with a curious but unmoved expression. He was particularly interested in how the gringo had entered his country with a gun but no fresh pursuit papers from his department, as was the usual procedure. As Shephard lay on the table and explained the casual methods of the Veracruz federales, his mind constantly wandered north to Jane, her lovely face, her words, “I love you.” When he finally sat up and felt the tight pinch of the new stitches in his side, he realized that over the last couple of days, few waking moments had not included thoughts of her.
The mayor was satisfied that the federales had done a poor job at Customs, willing as are all minor officials to blame their superiors in government. He turned over the matter to the governor’s assistant.
The assistant, a dapper man named Jaime Vogel, arrived an hour later, read Cortez’s report, then dropped the papers to the desk with irritation. Shephard looked into his half-Aryan face: high cheekbones and pale eyes, framed by jet black hair that was oiled perfectly into place. Vogel smelled of after-shave.
“No papers of pursuit,” he began. “No license to carry a firearm in Mexico. And you turn Isla Arenillas into the O.K. Corral. Mr. Shephard, this is quite irregular. Perhaps your Justice Department should know of this.”
Shephard was allowed to call Hannover, who thought at first that it was all a joke. But as the story came out over the static-cluttered lines, Hannover became attentive and businesslike, congratulating Shephard on a job “splendidly handled and executed.” He hung up in order to contact the U.S. Justice Department “with our end of the story.” Shephard was freed on his own recognizance for one hour, which he used to walk to the Presidente, charge another night’s lodging to his sadly overdrawn credit card, and to call Jane. There was no answer.
Justice Department officer Paul Rodriguez arrived late that afternoon. He locked horns with Vogel on official matters—mostly in Spanish—and Vogel seemed to be taking some pride in his stubbornness. When an agreement was reached, Rodriguez, speaking in English, asked Vogel how his sisters were and sent regards to Vogel from someone in the States.
Around eight they crowded into a tiny room behind the jail, where a white-clad assistant uncovered the body of Azul Mercante. Lack of refrigeration had made itself apparent. Rodriguez and Vogel haggled over photographs and dental records, which appeared from the former’s fat briefcase. Vogel finally signed the release papers with a flourish, then shook hands all around and excused himself into the streets of Cozumel.
Shephard was back at the hotel just after nine, taking the elevator to his second-floor room. From his window he could see the water surging onto the rough rocks below. He smoked a cigarette on the balcony, where the billowy blue smoke hung in the humid air. The radio in his room played only Dixieland jazz, which he turned off before calling Jane.
She finally answered. She had been outside with Cal, whom with the help of Little Theodore she had relocated to her house on Laguna Canyon Road. “At this point, Cal and Buster are getting to know each other,” she said.
“When can I get to know you?”
“Please make it soon. Tom, are you all right?”
He told her only that everything had been taken care of, and he would explain later. Then they talked for nearly an hour, about trivial things mostly, with Shephard unwilling to speak of the last days, and Jane respectful of his distance. It was a lovers’ talk, he thought later: enthused, aimless, and with a pleasure that would carry over into his dreams.
“Has Harmon been back?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. And Theodore hasn’t slept a minute.”
Shephard spent the next day on the beach, drinking Tecate beer with limes, dozing, watching the iguanas basking on the rugged rocks. That night he dined alone in the hotel, which he judged to be very good but overpriced. He called Jane twice and talked too long. As his adrenaline slowly subsided, he began to feel a deep exhaustion setting in, one that a night’s sleep would not cure. It was a draining of spirit, a hollowing, a need that he wasn’t sure how to fill. He called his father and was happy that he had returned safely, but Wade’s voice somehow depressed him. He talked to Louise again, and ran out of things to say.
Late the next morning he flew out on reservations made by Hannover at the department’s expense. Coach, but a window seat just the same.
Jane was waiting for him at the terminal, and Little Theodore was with her, grinning through his tangled jungle of beard, sipping a Bloody Mary that seemed miniaturized by his hand. “Aw, ain’t that cute,” he growled as Shephard and Jane kissed. “You stayed down in Mexico one day longer, I was gonna ask this princess to marry me.”
Theodore drove them back to Laguna in a big Cadillac that listed heavily to port when he got behind the wheel. “This runt gives you any trouble, just call Theodore,” he told Jane as she got out at Shephard’s apartment. “Good work, Shephard. I’m glad to hear you shot that sonofabitch.”
Late that night Shephard was lying flat on his back in his apartment, recounting to Jane his trek through the jungle, the moss-encrusted ruins of the Hotel Cora, and the ghostly presence of Azul Mercante. He didn’t mention Mercante’s story about an affair with Colleen; the words seemed unfit to repeat, unnecessary.
“Well, I guess it’s all over now,” Jane said. “But that hole in your side is awful. And I’d still like to know why Harmon wanted those files of my father’s—if it was Harmon who stole them.”
Sal came upstairs with a halibut he’d caught at Moss Street that evening, a joint clenched between his teeth. “Good to have you back, bro,” he said. “This halibut is the kind. Filet it and fry it with a little lemon and butter. The next time you go to Mexico, try an’ get a little fishing in, will ya?” He left a few minutes later with a wink at Shephard and a lewd glance at Jane, who had stretched out on the floor for a nap.
At nine the phone rang and Shephard immediately recognized the voice.
“Tom Shephard, Marla Collins here, from Bruce Harmon’s office. Hey, I read in the papers what happened in Mexico, and I thought it might not matter much, but I want to tell you who Bruce has been working for. The rotter fired me yesterday, so I guess I’m getting even. Still interested?”
“Sure. Shoot.”
“He’s had one client, and one client only, for the last week and a half. Called off all the others for this one; farmed them out to the other dicks. You might have heard of him, a real dandy from Newport Beach. Owns the Surfside Club. Joe Datilla.”
“Oh sure,” he said dreamily. “We’re old friends.”
“Really?”
“Just an expression. Thanks, Marla, you’re a sweetheart.”
When Shephard hung up, his mind was so confused it didn’t want to work.
“What’s wrong, Tom?” Jane asked, propping herself up on her elbows. Her skirt hiked up onto her thighs and Shephard felt a distant tug in his guts.
“Everything.”
When Datilla strolled onto the Surfside tennis courts the next morning to play against himself, Shephard was waiting on the bench beside the fence. A cool fog had come over the coast during the night, and Datilla looked surprised when he set down his bucket of balls.
“Hello, Tommy.” His grin was wide. “Congratulations, young man. You’ve got a whole city sleeping easier now.” He offered his hand; Shephard kept his inside the wind-breaker.
“You’re in trouble, Joe. You hired Bruce Harmon to find Mercante, and when he did you funneled him cash, a car, and an airline ticket to Mexico to kill my father. Know about all that, don’t you?”
Datilla touched his toes with a grunt, then began a series of knee-dips. “Might need a lawyer here, Tom, if you want to continue along those lines. Joking, aren’t you?”
Shephard watched Joe’s silver hair fall over his tanned forehead as he dipped. The fog made his
face damp. “No joke, Joe. One of the things that Helene left me before she checked out was something from your safe. Plates to the Cadillac Mercante was driving, so we wouldn’t spot them. I ran them past Sacramento, twice, and they’re yours. A terrified man who works at Valentine’s told me about Harmon’s easy money and little favors. You gave Mink the day off so Harmon could borrow the car without a fuss. A few hours after your jet took my father to Mexico, Harmon delivered a ticket and a suitcase to Mercante. The only people who knew he was going to Isla Arenillas were you and the pilot, and of course Harmon, who’s been handling your account exclusively for a week and a half. So go ahead, Joe. Get your lawyers out here if you want to. Personally, I’d be a tad embarrassed at what they’d have to hear.”
Shephard stood up and faced Datilla, who had stopped the knee-bends and was now midway through a jumping-jack routine. Shephard lit a cigarette and looked out through the fog. When Datilla spoke again, his voice had an edge.
“Do you know what you’re getting into, Shephard?”
“What am I getting into, Joe?”
“Let me tell you something as a friend, Tommy.” He continued his jumping jacks and still hadn’t lost his breath. “Azul Mercante is dead. He killed Tim and Hope and almost got Frank Rubio. He killed your mother. The guy’s a badass, and he got what he deserved. But it’s over. You’re a bit of a hero, and your father’s church gets a hundred grand out of me for that fucking hospital. If you can clear it with Hannover, I’ll just sign the rest of the reward money over to you. Hell, I’ll do it anyway. Be happy to. Anything beyond that is going to hurt us all. And I mean you, too, Tom, in a bad way.” Datilla went from jumping jacks to running in place. “Some things you just have to leave alone.”
Shephard considered Datilla’s words: he could remember speaking ones just like them to Dr. Zahara, hardly a week ago. Something about deserving to have secrets, like everybody else. The dark notes, he thought. Playing them with a vengeance now, the whole orchestra. He knew that there was no turning back from what he was about to do.
“Nice proposition. But unless you tell me a little more, I’m going to arrest you for conspiracy. Right here in your little club.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Then spill. The cuffs are in my pocket,” he lied.
“Stubborn little prick, aren’t you? Stubborn like your old man, same righteous cant. It makes me sick. Okay, Shephard, listen up and take your notes carefully.” Datilla was breathing quickly now. A thin stream of sweat broke over his face. “I helped Mercante get to Hope Creeley. And I helped him try for your old man, too. Why? Let’s just say they both knew things I’d rather they didn’t. And Mercante was an easy and convenient way to get that taken care of.”
“How did you know he was out of prison?”
“I saw him hitchhiking, of all the damned things. Right down Coast Highway toward Laguna. Couldn’t believe my eyes, so I turned around and passed him again. Third time clinched it, Tom. Azul Mercante. Alive and well in his old town. It took Bruce two days to find him, but he still beat you.”
Shephard struggled to piece together Helene Lang’s account of the death of Burton Creeley. Her story seemed to have been told a century ago; only the heavy smell of her lilac perfume came into his mind.
“You wanted Hope Creeley dead because she knew you had her husband drowned.”
“Wrong, detective. The bitch never even suspected it.”
“Then why?”
“Same reason I wasn’t too sad to read about Tim Algernon.”
“Just what was it they knew, Joe?”
Datilla’s legs stopped pumping. He put his hands on his hips, breathing deeply, still looking straight at Shephard. “I nudged Hope in a certain direction once, with some pressure, some cash, and a steady stream of phenobarbitol. Tim? He needed some money because his wife was sick, and I gave it to him—a lot of it. What they did for me in return was use a little … imagination. I paid for some imagination to protect a good friend of mine. And I simply didn’t want any of that story to get public, Tom. That’s what I mean by covering bets.”
“What kind of imagination are you talking about?” Shephard felt his mind struggling to calibrate what he was hearing against what he thought was true.
“It’s called perjury, Tom.” Datilla picked up his racquet and slashed it through the air in front of Shephard’s face. “One last chance to leave, detective. Take it while you can.”
“If I leave now, it’s with you, Joe. All the way to the station.”
Datilla slammed the racquet to the ground. “All right boy, you’ve made yourself a deal. I bought them off to try to help your father. Just like I kicked in another twenty thousand dollars. Those were 1951 dollars.” Shephard remembered the check that Helene had given him, Datilla to Wade, 1951. “That money made sure that a lab technician would find gunpowder on Mercante’s skin, when in reality there wasn’t any, Tim took the stand and said Azul made passes at his wife. Imagination. Hope told the court he tried to rape her, and God knows Mercante did make a pass at her one night. But in her state of mind she didn’t know how to take it, so I told her it was an open and shut case of attempted rape. Tim and Hope were insurance against Mercante, even though we already had his ass framed to the wall. You stupid prick, Mercante didn’t shoot Colleen. Wade did.”
For a moment Shephard felt as if his insides were scrambling to get out.
“That’s right, Shephard. Wade barged in on Colleen and Mercante, going at it in the living room. They were having quite a torrid little thing, you know. So Wade, drunk as usual back then, draws his gun and fires, and she jumps in the way. Mercante stands there like a dope while Wade falls on his wife—he couldn’t believe he’d missed, the dumb shit—then he picks up Wade’s gun. For a minute he held it to your dad’s head—Wade told me this—then he lost his nerve and ran for it. Too bad. Azul’s prints were on the gun, and a little money was all it took to make the lab tech report berium and antimony from the wax test.”
Like a man deep in the woods just realizing he is lost, Shephard felt panic. He stumbled ahead with the most obvious question of all. “So what you say is true. So it’s not. Why did you want him dead? What’s he got on you?”
Datilla paced the courtside. He stopped a few yards away, looking through the fog toward the Surfside A Dock. “Wade earned that money,” he said finally. Shephard could scarcely hear the words. But when Datilla turned back to him they came loud, bitter, and clear: “He did me a favor once, a business favor. He gave Burton Creeley a chilly ride from the waters of Laguna to the Newport Channel. He was a cop then. It was easy. Used a 1950 Chevy to do it.”
Shephard watched Datilla return to his racket, sweat dripping from his face, and heard the wicked swish of the graphite cutting the air again. The sound was somehow far away. “That’s what he’s got on me. Burton and me. So I wanted rid of him, too. I hate his hypocrisy; I hate his righteous generosity. I hate any man who’d shoot a woman like Colleen, accident or not. But more important, like I told you, I don’t take chances. I cover my bets. I didn’t want Wade to get confessional about things. He’s got that in him. To spill it all in the name of Cod. To purify himself, or some vague notion like that. Go ahead, Tommy Shephard, take me downtown if you want. But you’ll be taking Wade, too, because when I start talking I won’t quit until his name is so foul he’d be laughed off any pulpit on earth.
“You see this? See all this?” Datilla held out his racquet, sweeping it across the Surfside, its apartments and restaurants, lounges and docks, across the bay in the distance, smothered in fog. “I built it all, covering the bets, and I’ll cover them until I die. Mercante did it all. I just gave him a little help. Listen, you came through it clean. So did Wade, and so can I. Think of the thousands of sick little souls he can save with his new hospital. Look to the future and get your ass out of the past. You’re betting the hundred now to get fifty. And I promise you one thing, Shephard”—Datilla stepped forward and pressed the end of the racqu
et into Shephard’s chest—“If I go down, Wade goes down, too. It’s as simple as that.”
He stooped for his bucket and took it to the far end of the court. Lost in the fog, his voice seemed to come from nowhere, Shephard thought, or maybe from everywhere.
“I’ll be right here, Tom. Don’t worry. Think about a hundred grand of my money in your pocket, and the same for those folks south of the border. Everybody’s happy now, and getting happier. I’m a little more secure. Join the club, Tom. Everybody profits. The hawks always eat the sparrows—Wade told me that.” Shephard heard the muffled pop of a tennis ball through the fog. Then Datilla’s voice again, strangely distant: “Pretty funny, isn’t it? You still there, Tom? Wade puts the wrong guy in jail to save his own ass, and when he gets out, you shoot him. Hell, with a little luck, Azul could have been your father.”
TWENTY-NINE
Shephard spent the next hours wandering his city, a lanky figure with a stiff walk, scarcely aware of the life that bustled around him. He stopped for a beer at Marty Odette’s Sportsplace, a cup of coffee at the Hotel Laguna, and an ice cream, which he gazed at momentarily, then gave to a boy on a skateboard.
He walked until his legs were weary and his mind wanted to give up. By afternoon the thoughts that were wrenching him had blurred and all but lost meaning, but Shephard still felt no closer to a just decision. When he looked behind him he saw a sky swirling with the ghosts of the past; when he looked forward he saw where they would surely land. To take down Datilla would bring those ghosts to rest on his father, on himself, even on Jane. And what good would there be in it, besides the downfall of Datilla, a man who had once saved his father from shame, then tried to take his life, and now was offering to pick up the tab for everybody’s damages?
Laguna Heat Page 29
