by Avery Duff
“Mr. Freize,” he whispered back. “He’s a real nice man.”
He lay back in the tub and wondered if this desert trip had put him any closer to answering his client’s question: Why do they want to hurt my daddy?
He was closer to an answer, he first decided. Then he changed his mind: No. I’m not closer at all.
Then there were Carlos’ other puzzle pieces: O’Meira, Sticky Mickey, Your Decision! Clearly, he didn’t have a clue about them; neither had lifelong high-desert resident, Baker.
“Sticky Mickey,” Robert mumbled, eyes closing, finally accepting the dead end he’d reached. Knowing he’d done all he could ever do for his client.
Seemed like hours later, Robert bolted from a deep sleep, shivering in cold bathwater. His iPhone on the bathroom floor, his heart jacked, he checked the time. He’d slept twenty-five minutes; he toweled off, got dressed, and grabbed the ice bucket.
From the second floor, he pounded down the concrete exterior balcony. Below him, the empty swimming pool, filled with beer cans and empty tubs of off-brand peanut butter. As he reached for the ice scoop, music drifted to him dimly from across the main drag, out in the world.
At first, he didn’t recognize the melody. Maybe it was a recent song, and there wasn’t one. He could make out that shit-kicker bar down the highway; he and Erik had driven past it a few times since they’d arrived in the high desert. Live Music Tonight, according to black letters on a yellow, backlit sign.
A beer or two. Maybe a few shots to back them up. Exactly what I need.
As he crossed the highway, strains of the Temptations’ “I Can’t Get Next to You” reached out to him. Closer to the bar, he heard more of that sweet Motown sound.
Passing the sign, he saw the band’s name on its flip side. Noticing what it said for the first time, he stopped. Couldn’t believe it. His first impulse: to wake Erik, to call Gia. To tell someone who cared how the band billed itself.
Jesus and the Disciples Sing the Temptations.
Inside, the bar brimmed with desert folk. A fifty-and-over crowd, but the first person Robert laid eyes on: Jesus, onstage.
Chica boom, chica boom, Jesus was singing, winding up the number.
A black man in his sixties, backed by two women his age—they had to be the Disciples. One black, one white, wearing Motown-era, sparkling cocktail dresses like the Supremes used to wear.
The lead’s given name was Jesus Stone, the bartender said. Jesus played Temptations covers here once a month. Rest of the time, he traveled a small-town cactus circuit.
Robert drained his first beer, ordered another, and listened to Jesus finish his last set with “Get Ready.” Guy could sing, that’s for sure, and he sang with joy. The same joyful vibe infused the backups, too, even though a third Disciple was out with a bad hip.
Jesus wound up the number, took his bow with the obligatory, “Thank you, thank you very much!” This older crowd started breaking up, filtering out pretty fast.
Robert walked up to Jesus at the bar.
“Jesus, my name is Robert Worth. I came up here from LA, and I need to talk to you. It’s very important.”
The man turned on his bar stool, smiled. “What’s on your mind, son?”
That joy Robert saw earlier wasn’t stage presence. There was something about him offstage, too.
“Two men,” Robert said. “Teo and Carlos Famosa. Do you know them?”
“No, I don’t,” Jesus said.
Robert said, “Yes, you do. You must know them. I know that you do.”
“Hold on now, Robert. Didn’t know them as men, but I did meet two boys, last name Famosa, Teo and Carlos. Didn’t know ’em well. Long as I live, though, I’ll never forget ’em, and that father of theirs, their mom? Them, too.”
Robert tried to keep his thinking steady, his questions simple, but his pulse was racing.
“Carlos and Teo—they never forgot you, either. But I don’t know why. Can you tell me why?”
“Not sure about that, but I’ll share how I know ’em. Never shared it with anyone else, except my wife, and it’s still clear as day inside my head. Want the long or the short of it?”
He’d almost died finding this man.
“Longer the better,” Robert said.
“All right, then . . . Back then, back when I met the Famosas, I was a park ranger, but my story started, I guess, well before that. Sure you want the long of it?”
“Going nowhere,” Robert said, hitting his beer.
As Jesus Stone’s story unfolded, Robert learned the man was from Riverside, a town between the high desert and LA. A senior linebacker, he’d been a high school phenom with college offers when he blew out his ACL.
“And thirty years ago, a blown ACL was all she wrote, but I couldn’t accept it. Playing college ball, the NFL, that was my big dream. A kid’s dream, but that’s how it was.”
Robert nodded. His own family came to mind—Robert had some idea what it was like, having the rug pulled out from under your life.
“So I came up here after high school, me and some teammates, and we got drunk for a few days, ran around the desert, caused trouble. Angry, bitter, I was bad company—I mean, the ones I was with, they were going on, and I was stayin’ behind—and I got into it with somebody and they took off, left me up here. Had a hundred bucks, no car, and I decided I’d show them. So when they came back, I hid from ’em. Smart, huh?”
Robert smiled. “I understand stubborn.”
“Lucky’s what it was. I wound up staying. At first, it was I’d show them, but there wasn’t no them. There’s just me. But the desert, it works on you, know what I mean?”
“Not really, no.”
“Truly, I don’t know if the desert finds you or you find the desert, but after a while, you pick up a vibration. I mean, being alone in the park at sunrise or sundown, your place in the world, in the universe, it gets real clear. And if you’re paying attention, you take a good, hard look at yourself and count your blessings. Took about six months. After that, I didn’t want to leave. Wound up landing a job as a park ranger, met a good woman up here, too—Kay. Got married and lived my life. Only thing missing was kids. Me and Kay were never blessed with ’em.”
A blessing. Like Delfina.
“I liked being a ranger, helping folks out. Most are decent, but every once in a great while, you’ll run across a jackass.”
“Vincent Famosa?” Robert asked.
“One and the same. Got a report, a couple kids running around. Some food went missing from another site, so I went over to where they’d camped. The wife, she was drunk . . .”
“Zara,” Robert said.
“Zara, right. She was drunk, and the husband, he was an arrogant so-and-so in his city-hustler outfit, saying there might not be any LA to go back to because of . . . can’t remember if it was earthquakes or what . . . but somehow this Vincent, he just knew. And the woman, she wanted to go hiking, but she was almost too drunk to stand up.”
Robert pictured them now in Teo’s old desert photo. Zara in hiking shorts. Vincent sitting on that log in his hat, arms crossed, wearing his spit-shined Stacy Adams shoes.
“And then there were the two boys. Nice-looking kids but not getting any direction from the higher-ups, if you dig me?”
“Dig you, Jesus,” Robert said, digging how it sounded.
“So I offered to take the boys off their hands for a while, and the parents, they jumped all over it. Got Teo and Carlos in the truck after that, gave ’em each a full canteen, and we drove over to a hike I know. Told ’em it was top secret . . . nobody knew about it except a chosen few.”
“Samuelson’s Rocks. Faiht and Truht.”
Jesus smiled at him. “One of the chosen few, sitting right here with me. Now, these two boys didn’t get along, and I wanted to let that play out. So middle of the day, I walked them out to the rocks. Must’ve been a hundred and ten, and I took ’em a long way around . . .”
What Robert heard next came as no su
rprise: Teo had run ahead and teased Carlos about being slow and weak; pretty soon, Teo had run out of water. That’s when Carlos told Teo how stupid he was and told Jesus he wouldn’t share his water with Teo.
Famosa family, business as usual, Robert was thinking.
“And all of a sudden, I saw that family’s mechanism. Clear to me. Clearer than my own life was to me, know what I’m sayin’?”
“I do,” Robert said.
“Found us some boulder shade, sat ’em both down. Told ’em they were brothers and they were supposed to look after each other. ‘One of you’s fast and strong, and the other one’s smart as hell. The two of you ought to lift each other up. Not be selfish with your water, Carlos. And Teo, wait up for your brother; it ain’t gonna kill you doing that, is it?’
“Thing is, Robert, and God only knows why—they listened to me. Carlos, he started crying about being selfish, and Teo told Carlos he was sorry for bullying him, teasing him. Things they both musta had in their hearts a long time. And after we left Samuelson’s Rocks and went back to the campsite, I let them out the truck, hugged ’em both. And they hugged me, too, I remember. And then, I’ll never forget it, both of ’em said: ‘Thank you, Jesus.’”
Thank you, Jesus. And there it was. Neither boy ever forgot that moment.
“Right then, though, that shitbird Vincent, he started up. ‘C’mon over here, you two. Let’s go. Show that man how fast you are, Teo!’” Already setting ’em against each other. That little man, Vincent, trying to set himself above me, too, by bossing the boys. His boys, but the thing is, Teo started to run, but he stopped, came back for Carlos, and the two of ’em walked back into the campsite together. Tell ya, if I coulda scooped ’em up right there, taken them home to Kay, we’d’a raised those boys with love, like nature dictates, but . . .”
Jesus ended that part with a sigh.
Robert felt as if he’d stumbled onto the Famosa tribe’s sacred burial site. As if Delfina had chosen him on the Venice Boardwalk to hear every word of it.
Jesus said, “Back then, I knew the owner of the 29 Palms Inn, said she’d put up the Famosas one night, free of charge. So I went back, told Vincent I’d found ’em a place to stay. He made some big-man noise at first, but he wound up taking me up on it. Zara seemed happy about it, too.”
A cold breeze hit Robert, gave him a shiver. He looked up—just the air conditioner blowing down on him.
“How are Carlos and Teo doing?” Jesus asked.
Robert had been dreading that question. What the hell. Just tell him.
“Carlos died recently. Teo’s in a coma; it could go either way.”
“Mmm,” Jesus said. “I always wondered if they overcame their handicap, how they did in life.”
Robert looked Jesus in the eye and gave it to him, straight-up.
“Teo still struggles with drugs and alcohol, but he’s fighting for sobriety. He has a beautiful daughter, a real sweetheart, Delfina. Couple of years ago, Teo brought her up here and went by the ranger station—he was looking for you, Jesus, wanted her to meet you. You meant something special to Teo all his life. When he was getting sober, he talked about his trip to the desert. And he never forgot what you told him—about loving his brother. I know that, because he told me he loved Carlos, even if Carlos didn’t love him.”
“That’s something to hear, right there.”
“Carlos never forgot you, either. Before he died, I know he was thinking about Samuelson’s Rocks, about his hike with you and Teo. He was a CPA, smart, what you picked up on that day. Carlos, he made some big mistakes, but he had tons more courage than people gave him credit for. In his heart . . . in his heart of hearts . . . he wanted to do right by his brother.”
Jesus said, “Thanks for that, Robert.”
“Your kindness that day rippled through their lives, still does, and I’m so grateful I could share it with you.”
They didn’t say anything for a minute or so, and he wondered what it was about the Famosas that made him want to cry. He didn’t know the answer, but sitting at the empty bar, that’s what he did.
Feeling a hand on his shoulder, he heard Jesus say, “Go ahead, Robert. I’ll save my tears for later.”
Out in the parking lot, Robert and Jesus walked over to a white Cadillac convertible. A cherry ’72 DeVille, Jesus’ car, where they exchanged cards.
“We’re playing up the road in Twentynine Palms tomorrow night. You stick around, I might drag Kay out of the house to meet you.”
Turned out, once Kay had watched a few hundred sets by Jesus and the Disciples and decided she’d done her bit for the band.
“Staying over’s not in the cards,” Robert said. “One day, I’ll make sure Teo brings Delfina up here to meet you and Kay. You’re part of her life; she should know who you are.”
Jesus lit up hearing that. “My cell’s on the card. You ever come up here again, you should stay at the inn, same as the Famosas did. Old adobe bungalows, fireplaces in the rooms. It’s tucked up against the desert, a bona fide oasis.”
“An oasis? C’mon.”
“Palm trees, fresh water: the Oasis of Mara. The real-deal Holyfield, gives you more desert flavor than staying on the highway.”
Robert had stopped listening at Oasis of Mara—remembering O’Meira from Carlos’ work notes. Delfina had told him that she and Teo had stopped at a motel on their desert trip. A place with a bright-blue swimming pool they couldn’t afford.
“Do they have a swimming pool?” Robert asked.
“Right after you drive in. On the right, a nice one,” Jesus said.
Fifteen minutes later, Robert eased Erik’s SUV through the inn compound’s open gates. Rolling up its sand drive, past the glimmering pool to his right, he stopped at the inn’s office. Lights were off inside, a flipped-over cardboard clock on the door handle: Closed.
Open or closed, my client’s money is here, and I’m going to find it.
Back at the bar’s parking lot, he and Jesus had already studied an online map of the grounds. Each of the adobe bungalows and wood cabins had a name. Jesus pointed out where the Famosas had spent the night in the ’60s.
Once he saw that adobe’s name, Robert told Jesus: “Everything makes sense now.”
Lights dimmed, driving toward the rear of the compound, Robert stopped at a T. To his left: a few parked cars and pink adobes. To his right: more wood cabins joined the mix.
Not a big crowd tonight, he decided.
Backing up, he pulled into designated parking for the very first adobe on the right, its name carved into a simple wooden plaque: Forget Me Not. The adobe where, according to Jesus, the Famosa family spent one night.
Forget Me Not.
“Don’t forget,” Robert whispered. Words from Carlos’ Argonaut notice, from Carlos’ work notes, and from Carlos’ note inside the backpack at Samuelson’s Rocks.
Forget Me Not, a large, unlit adobe. Slowly, he eased up its iron gate latch and crossed its walled-in, raked-sand yard to the large window. He peered inside at a made-up bed in a moonlit room. Given the flat roof, Robert didn’t believe Carlos had stashed the money inside. Going out the way he’d come in, he stopped.
To his left glistened the Oasis of Mara: a quarter-acre pool surrounded by royal palms, dappled by moonlight. So quiet. Gia’s peaceful backyard seemed chaotic in comparison as two coyotes padded past him to grab a drink from the oasis.
One slow step at a time, he began to circle Forget Me Not. Stopping and studying the ground ahead. Rounding its first corner, he spotted a small stack of rocks on the ground. A cairn below a ten-foot-tall Engelmann’s prickly pear.
Angle Mann. Meet Karen.
Racing back to the truck, he grabbed Erik’s shovel, came back, and started digging around the cairn. The sand gave way fast. Two minutes later, he hit Carlos’ first backpack. Same as the one out at Samuelson’s Rocks, except this one was loaded with stacks of thousands. Five minutes after that, two large packs rested on the ground. Shouldering the first
one back to the Yukon, he came back for the second. It was only then he noticed the prickly pear’s rounded pads, backlit by the moon.
In silhouette, they looked exactly like Mickey Mouse ears.
Sticky Mickey, he said to himself, getting into the Yukon. Good one, Carlos, but you’re a little late.
Sitting there in the still compound, Robert now knew that the brothers had talked to Jesus Stone in the desert as boys, and spent that same night in this adobe. And he believed, too, that the Famosa family’s night in Forget Me Not had been peaceful, a sentiment that had carried into the next day, when the boys bought two rocks at the Tortoise, and clacked them together on their drive back to LA. One shining moment, however brief, that both men had separately treasured all their lives.
And as he drove out the gates of the inn, leaving the oasis behind, the last thing that blazed in his headlights—a square wooden motel sign with words from Carlos’ work notes: It’s Your Decision!
You got that right, Carlos, he was thinking, as he floored the Yukon out of there.
Robert’s motel room shades were drawn. Drinking coffee, seated, Erik looked at the money stacks spread out on the second double bed.
“How much?”
“Three million eight and change,” Robert said. “Plus the hundred fifty thousand already in hand.”
“I’m putting in for a raise,” Erik said, wincing as he stood, clearly doped up. Crossing to the money bed, he eased himself down till he was sitting.
“Gonna roll in this dough, Beach Lawyer.”
“How many pills you take?”
“This morning or the last five minutes?”
Erik tried to lie down on the money, got a sharp jolt of pain to the ribs, and gave up.
“On our way home, we go to a strip club, make it rain.”
“Will do,” Robert said. “But listen, man. Rule Number One: Nobody Talks about Fight Club.”
Meaning the four dead men.
Erik nodded. “Rule Number Two: Nobody Talks about Fight Club.”
Robert stared at the money and had to admit: something about it made him want to roll around in it, too.
