by Avery Duff
“Your turn,” he said.
“Why do they call it a rabbit?” she asked. Meaning the free end of the rope.
He called for Gia, and she came out of the bathroom in a terry-cloth robe.
“What’s up, MacGyver?” she asked.
“Why do they call the end of the rope a rabbit?”
“Rabbit’s easy to remember. So you’ll remember how to tie the knot.”
She took a bow and left the room.
“She’s smart,” Robert said.
“I know. I acted bad today with Gia. I’m sorry.”
“Gia didn’t tell me you acted bad.”
“I went in the bedroom and slammed the door and started crying like I was still a baby.”
Now he got it—Delfina had misbehaved after hearing about his desert plans. The camping store had been Gia’s solution, and it worked.
“Did you tell Gia you were sorry?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
It was all he could do not to reach over and hug her. Instead, he put a hand on her shoulder, squeezed it, and picked his words carefully.
“Gia is still your friend, Delfina. You did everything right, and we both care a lot about you, okay? A lot-lot,” he added.
He could see his kind words warming her, and instead of starting to cry, he said, “C’mon, make that rabbit come out of the hole . . .”
Later that night, Robert found a couple of more hours with Carlos’ work notes. Each time he did, they made more and more sense to him.
Once he made it to bed, half-asleep, Gia slipped in beside him in a black T-shirt with white letters on the front; he couldn’t read them in the dark.
He said, “Erik doesn’t want to take my Bronc to the desert. Says it’s a relic.”
“More like vintage,” she said.
“A classic, right?”
“Don’t push it,” she said. “Taking the Prius?”
“Guess so. His car, he said.”
“Hey, you’re the one who told him it was a great family car.”
“It’s a three- or four-hour drive. I worry about him in that small car.”
“About him?”
Even in the dark, he knew when she was laughing at him.
Robert asked, “What is up with you and Erik and his Prius?”
“You’re just a funny man, baby, that’s all.”
“At the camping store, what’d Evelyn whisper to you?”
“Nothing much. Something like: Have children, my dear. It’s my only regret in life. Come here,” she said, pulling him toward her prone body. For some reason, she didn’t take off her T-shirt. Somehow, he made it work anyway.
The next morning in bed, he peeked at her T-shirt before she woke up; from the camping store, it read: Leave It Better Than You Found It.
He nuzzled her till her eyes opened.
“Did I?” he asked.
“What?” she murmured.
“Leave it better than I found it?”
“Much better,” she said, slipping the shirt over her head. “Wear it to the desert. You mind?”
He didn’t mind at all . . .
CHAPTER 34
“When did you plan on telling me about it?” Robert asked Gia.
“Never,” Gia said. “It was too much fun keeping it secret.”
Delfina was laughing along with Gia.
“You knew about it, too?” Robert asked.
“A little bit,” she said. “Mr. Jacobson took me for a ride.”
“C’mon, Beach Lawyer, lighten up,” Erik said. “My lads love it, too.”
They all stood on the street. In front of them, Erik’s rhino-coated Yukon Denali SUV. A ProZ LED light bar rested on top of the cab, a bush grille up front. Inside, an auxiliary battery pack and in-dash TVs, front seat and rear, and all seats heated with headrests.
Damn!
The SUV’s name: the Beast. According to Erik, his boys halfway believed the Beast was alive, and they slept inside it whenever their parents allowed it.
“He built a huge gun safe into the floor. Did he show you?” Gia asked.
“No,” Robert said. “But he just now told me all about it.”
Robert got why Erik’s boys had yelled, “Beach! Beach!” Wrong. “Beast! Beast!” they’d been saying. And, God, did he covet this truck, especially knowing deep down that the Bronc’s likelihood of a desert breakdown was roughly 30 percent. Robert swung his sleeping bag and backpack—filled with Delfina’s buys—into its cavernous back seat.
“Please take this with you.”
It was Delfina’s voice. When he turned, she held out her hand. In her palm, she held Teo’s rock. He knelt in front of her.
“That belongs to you and your daddy. I can’t take that.”
“Please?” she asked.
He figured out what she really meant: Bring it back. He took the rock. Unable to help himself, he swooped her up and gave her a big hug.
“I’ll take it, just for you.”
“Keep it in your pocket,” she said, “so it’ll be safe.”
He put her down and snapped it inside his pants pocket.
“That okay?” he asked.
She smiled at him; he knew he’d passed muster.
As they drove the SUV toward Barrington Avenue, Robert looked in the mirror at Delfina and Gia, both waving. He waved back.
Erik said, “My boys can be sweet. Delfina is sweet.”
Robert nodded.
“Gets to you, doesn’t it?” Erik asked.
He nodded again.
“Whew.” That was all Robert could muster.
CHAPTER 35
Robert’s Waze app put the Beast downtown on the I-10, then onto the Pomona Freeway. To their left lay Skid Row, the heart of LA’s dark side. Inside Skid Row, Union Rescue Mission, LA’s final safety net before darkness descended.
Erik asked, “The trust’s apartments, they were out this way, right?”
“Not far. Monterey Park.” About five miles east of downtown.
As the sun filled the Yukon’s cab with warmth, enhancing its new-car smell and the scent of Gia on his T-shirt, Robert recalled last night’s visit with Teo at Saint John’s. Delfina had already spoken to her father and had given Robert some time alone in the room. Sliding a chair next to the bed, Robert had taken a shot at bringing Teo’s subconscious up to speed:
“Teo, I’ve been looking into your life and into your brother’s life the last several days, and . . .”
He stopped, started over.
“Teo, it’s me, Robert. Hey, man. I’m here with Delfina and wanted you to know I’ve been working for you. Gia and I, we’ve been taking real good care of Delfina. Think we’re doing okay, but we’ve never done anything like this. We like having her with us, but we’re all looking forward to you getting out of here. You, too, right? When you do, no matter what, there’s going to be money waiting, enough for you and Delfina to make a new start.”
He’d looked out at the nurse’s station. Delfina was talking to a shift nurse.
Talking to Teo again: “So anyway, I know a lot more about you and Carlos now. In some ways, more than you knew. Oh, I met Benny, your sponsor, and he told me what you shared in the meeting. It was hard for him to tell me, but that’s what he thought best, telling me, and I know he was right. He knows your situation, too, and wants you back on your feet again.
“And what you told Benny about Carlos was right. Your brother did love you. I saw that old rock in his study, the one you saw, too, and I know now how much seeing that meant to you. But Teo, there’s no other way to put it—Carlos messed up big-time, and that’s what he wanted to tell you. He wanted a chance to meet with you and talk. I know you felt like you’d let Carlos down over the years, but I think he probably wanted a chance to apologize to you. Not what you were thinking, right?
“Anyway, Carlos did something with the trust’s money he shouldn’t have. He felt terrible about it, wanted to make things right, if that was possible. What I’m going to do is,
I’m going to do my best, my very best for you and Delfina, because you two are my first serious clients. That way, you’ll give me good word of mouth when you’re on your feet again.
“Look, I know you made mistakes along the way. Same here—I made some big ones, believe me. Guess we all do, but you raised a great little girl, and she knows how much you care about her. That’s for damn sure, Teo. She knows it top to bottom and inside and out.”
He’d waited a minute until he’d stopped crying.
“I think, end of his life, your brother was a brave man. Just like you, Teo. Lo respeto.”
Now, as Erik’s Yukon passed the exits to Monterey Park, Robert pointed out the one that led to Vincent’s fallen empire.
Erik said, “The Famosa family had it made and blew it.”
“If Vincent hadn’t been such a prick, poisoned his family.” Robert shared something Teo once had told him about Vincent: “Vincent never saw Carlos taking over as trustee. He enjoyed the grandeur—in his mind—of being trustee. Lording it over his sons, telling ’em he’d outlive both of them.”
“Your own father, rooting against you? Can’t imagine it.”
A poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley rolled into Robert’s mind: “Ozymandias,” memorized under threat of a high school F. In the poem, an ancient traveler came upon a rubble-strewn desert. All that remained of King Ozymandias’ once-great empire: two broken legs from a statue of him, pieces of his arrogant sneer, and a pedestal with this inscription:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
“Sure, Vincent, was a big deal,” Robert told Erik, “till somebody invaded his rectum with a plastic prick, then beat him to death.”
“Or vice versa. How’d a junior hustler like him put together a stake?” Erik asked.
Robert told him about Vincent’s bet on the Ramos v. Ramos fight, followed by a decade-long string of winning bets.
“Then he bought a single-family house—Highland Park, Teo said. Teo has an old photo of Carlos and him on the front steps. Them working, while Vincent brought over a woman, a girlfriend, who knows, to see what a hotshot he was.”
“Small-time clown,” Erik said. “All Vincent’s winning bets. You buy it?”
“Did till you asked. Why?”
“’Cuz shoving a hunk of plastic up a straight man’s rectum? That ain’t a garden-variety beef.”
He was right. Robert had no answer for that one and doubted he ever would.
An hour later, a hundred miles east of Robert’s boardwalk slot, the Yukon approached the first of the desert wind farms west of Palm Springs. Robert could see how the gigantic white single-prop whirligigs passed for spaceships to Delfina and robots to Erik’s boys.
Erik said, “Okay, there’s three entrances to the park. Which one do we want?”
“Let’s go to the board first, shall we, contestants?”
On his laptop, Robert had already lined up Carlos’ client notes into a columned list:
Monumental Park
West Only
Profit
Evergreen
Yuck
Rx Samuelson
Truht/Faiht
granted
a real chiseler
O’Meira
Don’t Forget!
Angle Mann
Sticky Mickey
Meet Karen
a real prick
Your Decision!
Dance Wif me ’Inri (not cockney)
“First,” Robert said, “Monumental and Park. Joshua Tree National Park was originally designated a national monument, not a national park. So in my mind, that makes it a . . . ?”
“A Monumental Park,” Erik said.
“Check. Next is West Only, so how’s this? There are three entrances into the park. Cottonwood entrance is off the I-10, but it leads into the low desert, and as we know from doing our homework . . . ?”
“Joshua trees grow only in the high desert. So scratch that Cottonwood entrance.”
“Check. That leaves us with the other two entrances: the North Entrance or the West Entrance. What’s your raw instinct as a top-tier investigator telling you?”
“Mmm . . . West Entrance Only?”
They pounded fists. Ten miles later, Erik exited the I-10, the Beast flying along Route 62’s miles-long uphill grade.
Erik asked him, “Remember all those wind turbines in Jerry Maguire?”
“Turbines were in Rain Man.”
“Nope, Jerry Maguire. Tom Cruise drove by all those turbines. I can picture him doing it.”
“That was in Rain Man—Tom Cruise driving by them in Rain Man.”
“Rain Man. ‘Show me the money,’ right?”
Either Erik had the movies mixed up or was messing with him; Robert’s money was on messing with.
Erik kept it up. “Rain Man. The autistic brother, Dustin Hoffman, saying, ‘Show me the money!’ My man, Dusty, autistic but keeping it real.”
“Are you vaguely aware of the actor named Cuba Gooding Junior?”
“Boyz n the Hood, sure, a classic, like your Bronco. Cuba running up that Crenshaw alley. Gang pulls up behind him—run, Cuba!—they gun him down anyway.”
Robert knew that Cuba’s friend—played by Morris Chestnut—had been gunned down in the movie. So, he was pretty sure, did Erik.
“What ever happened to Cuba Gooding Junior?” Erik asked.
“Other than Jerry Maguire?”
“Cuba was in Jerry Maguire? You kiddin’ me?”
“How long you gonna keep this up?”
“Till you show me the trust money, baby! Show me the money, Roberto!”
So Robert started laying out three separate Famosa trips to the desert:
“Back in the ’70s, Vincent took Zara and both sons to Joshua Tree. That’s where he bought ’em the first two rocks. Then, two years ago, Teo and Delfina made their desert trip. He bought her a stamped rock, and on this trip, Teo told Delfina he was looking for Jesus.”
“Desert’s a good place for that.”
“Now, not long before he died, Carlos went to the desert alone. He hid the cash, bought three new stamped rocks like Delfina’s, and framed them back in LA. And while he was up here, I think Carlos went looking for Jesus, too.”
“Teo and Jesus, I get. Delfina told you, but how do you figure Carlos and Jesus?”
Robert explained the last of Carlos’ work notes: Dance wif Me ’Inri (not cockney).
“‘Dance with Me Henry’ was the name of a raunchy rock-and-roll classic, but instead of writing H-e-n-r-y, Carlos used I-n-r-i.”
“’Ello, ’Enry,” Erik said in terrible cockney.
“Not cockney, dude. I-n-r-i reminded me of something: the Romans put those letters at the top of Jesus’ cross. I-N-R-I, an acronym for Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
“So each brother came back to the desert, at different times, looking for Jesus?”
“Yep.”
“Like it,” Erik said. “What about R-X Samuelson?”
“What about it? Or him? Or her? Or them?”
“Granted? Chiseler? O’Meira?” Erik asked.
“Work in progress, okay, but I think Meet Karen is really Meet Cairn. Cairn, those stacked rocks we see on the hike. Like, Carlos maybe built a cairn where he hid the dough.”
Erik said, “Or he left a woman named Karen standing in the desert with the money.”
“Let’s go with my cairn. And I have ideas about finding Jesus.”
Robert told him most rock formations in the park had names like crossword-puzzle clues—the Arch, Elephant Arches, Lost Horizon, Great Chasm, Cyclops, Ghost Rock, Tulip Rock, Wonderland of Rocks, Iron Door. But two other formation names could relate to Jesus: Stone Temple and Skull Rock.
Taking Stone Temple first, Robert said, “If you Google Jesus and Temple, you find major hits on Jesus driving the money changers from the temple in Jerusalem.”
Erik thought about it. “Money changers? A
little bit like Boris, huh?”
“Makes sense, right?”
“Enough. Skull Rock ties in with Jesus, too?”
“Even more, I think. Jesus was crucified on a hill called Calvary, but Calvary’s called Golgotha. And Golgotha, in Latin, means ‘skull.’”
“Skull Rock—hallelujah!” Erik said.
At the end of a thirty-mile, winding upgrade, they hit the high desert. The Twentynine Palms Highway flattened out, straightened, and turned east. For the next thirty miles lay the high-desert communities of Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, and City of Twentynine Palms.
And growing here and there on each side of the road: real clusters of those tarantula-trunk Joshua trees, like the biblical prophet Joshua waving them on.
CHAPTER 36
Indian Cove Campground rested at the end of a windswept road off the high-desert highway. It had one hundred-plus camping slots scattered among hundred-foot-tall rock mounds, sandy washes, and a long wall of tan, odd-shaped boulders. According to the guidebook, that boulder wall was the north face of Wonderland of Rocks.
They’d learned about the campsite at the ranger station near the park’s West Entrance. Without mentioning Stone Temple or Skull Rock, Robert had asked if any of the park’s rock formations might relate to Jesus. None of the on-duty rangers could think of a single one and wondered why he wanted to know.
Because of the law that applied to any money they might find in the park, Robert stayed mum on his reasons. Even Erik was discreet, once Robert filled him in on Gia’s banging legal memorandum on the subject.
California’s statute provided that if anyone found property worth more than $100 and the owner was unknown, the finder had to turn it over to local police. If the police could find the owner, they in turn must notify him of the found property and return it to him. If the owner didn’t show up within ninety days and the property was worth more than $250, police then made a public announcement. If no owner showed seven days after that, the finder became the keeper. But if you found such property and didn’t report it to police—you’d be guilty of theft.
Gia concluded, and Robert agreed, that the trust owned the property. That meant the owner was known, not unknown, meaning the statute didn’t apply if he was the finder. Great as far as the law went, but if Robert found the trust’s money and law enforcement got wind of it, how would he go about proving ownership? Those two circulars for bogus investments? Bulgarian money launderers? Carlos’ so-called work notes?
