by Al Macy
Comparisons between a redwood forest and a cathedral are right on the money. Both have huge pillars, high ceilings, and complete silence. Birdsong is rare; the trees are resistant to insects, and fewer insects means fewer birds. The duff on the ground—a thick layer of fragrant needles, leaves, and twigs—further absorbed most sounds. The light was low because storm clouds were blowing in from the ocean.
We ate without communicating, each lost in our own thoughts.
Carly finished first, packing the sandwich wrapping into her backpack and balancing her beer on the uneven bark of the decaying log. “Have you checked up on Toby?”
Damn. It had slipped my mind. “Not yet.”
“You forgot.”
I said nothing.
“Remember Great-aunt Laurie.”
Good point. Our great-aunt Laurie had graduated high school as valedictorian then started acting strange in her first year at Cornell. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, called manic depression back then. She swung between exhilarating episodes of overachieving to days when she couldn’t get out of bed. I’d met her only once, at a time when her medication was keeping her on an even but suppressed keel.
“Carly, there’s something I need to disclose to you. You know that Finn and I have been friends for years, despite being opponents in court.”
“You want to have sex with her.” She used the more vulgar sign for “have sex,” the one that looks to me like two bunny rabbits bumping each other.
“No. Come on. Why do you say that?”
“You two were fooling around at Starbucks.”
What? Was it televised or something? “We were just kidding around.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Okay. Well, anyway, if we have any kind of relationship, I need to tell you, and that’s what I’m doing now.”
“Is it love or lust?” Leave it to Carly to ask insightful questions.
I thought about it. Thunder rumbled in the west. Carly was oblivious to it.
“Well?”
“Ach. I don’t really know, okay? I wouldn’t even be thinking about this if I didn’t have an ethical obligation to tell you. So, is it okay if it turns out we have some kind of thing? Actually, I will probably stay away from her, socially, until after the trial is over, but I needed to tell you.”
“It’s a good thing, isn’t it?” She looked me in the eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“If she falls in love with you, it will be hard for her to convict your twin sister, right?”
Had I been thinking that when I pulled Finn into my lap?
I listened to the thunder, which was getting closer. “Let’s head back to the car. It’s about to start raining.”
* * *
The next morning, I swung by Toby’s apartment. My knock was answered by his roommate, a teenager with a mullet and a Southern accent to match. I looked behind him into the apartment. Pizza boxes on the coffee table, beer bottles on the floor, and ripped couch cushions. The usual. Trying to get Toby to clean up his room had been a constant battle when he lived at home. It wasn’t my problem anymore.
“Not here, dude.” The roommate called everyone dude. “He’s out taking photos.”
“Do you know where?”
“Yeah, dude. Out on the jetty.”
I nodded. “How’s he doing?”
“Who, Toby?”
No, Prince Harry. Sheesh. “Yeah.”
He shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
“Any ups and downs?”
“What?”
“Does his mood tend to fluctuate? Up and down?”
“I guess.” He shrugged again. “No, not really, dude. Sometimes he just kinda hangs out around here.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Walking back to the car, I texted my son: Where you at?
It wasn’t until I’d gotten back to the office that I got the reply: North Jetty.
Meet you there.
Cool.
To get to the ocean from Redwood Point Harbor, ships must cross over the treacherous “bar” between two jetties. In the 1800s, ten percent of the lumber boats attempting it wrecked. Nowadays, in winter, ships often have to wait weeks for the swell to be manageable enough to allow a crossing. The jetties themselves are dangerous, with rogue waves that seem eager to pull unsuspecting tourists into the sea.
The swell was running high when I parked in the sand lot by the north jetty. Waves whooshed along the rocks in turn, sounding like 747s passing over the end of a runway. Carly had surfed here with her friends many times. Not me. Too gnarly.
As I feared, Toby was far out on the jetty, squatting down, presumably taking photographs. That kid has no common sense. I waved, but he wasn’t looking my way. The smell of a dead animal occasionally washed over me with the stronger gusts. Probably a seal carcass on the beach. I was halfway to him when he turned, waved, and started my way.
People often say, “Never, ever turn your back on the ocean.” I always think, And if you’re in Kansas? But the advice made sense in this situation, and Toby was unaware of the big set that was rolling in behind him. His clothing already soaked, he should have known to keep a weather eye out.
I waved both hands over my head, but his attention was focused on choosing his foot placements. The largest of the waves passed the metal tower at the tip of the jetty, the automated structure that stood in for a real lighthouse. The wave covered the rocks as it progressed, like God’s firehose spraying retardant foam. I yelled. No way could he hear me.
Finally, the sound of the approaching breaker caught his attention. He dropped into a crevice between two dolosse, huge cement structures that looked like Paul Bunyan’s toy jacks. Toby disappeared when the wave washed over him. When it passed, he popped up, giving me a big thumbs up. Even from where I was, his smile stood out. The next, bigger wave hit him, and he fell forward.
He popped back up a little more slowly that time and looked seaward. I guess he can learn. When we met, he was shivering like a Chihuahua at the North Pole. His forehead sported a two-inch gash surrounded by road rash that resembled a scraped pizza. Did he even know he was cut?
I said, “What the hell is wrong with—” Stop! Not helpful.
My abusive comment put only a momentary dent in his smile. “It’s okay, Dad. Check this out. It’s a dry bag. The camera’s fine.” He unsnapped and unrolled the screaming-orange bag and pointed to the Nikon inside, surrounded with bubble wrap.
“Aren’t you cold?” The gusts were whipping by us, and I had to raise my voice to be heard. He wore only jeans and an O’Neill hoodie that Carly had given him. We jogged back to my car. I got him inside, turned the heat on high, and pulled the first aid kit and some emergency clothing from the trunk. I got him to exchange his soaking shirt and sweatshirt for a wool sweater and a foil emergency blanket. If anything, his shivering got worse.
“Dad, I’ve got to show you these shots I got.” He swiped through the shots on his camera and handed it to me. “Check this out. That’s the best one.”
It was good. Not worth dying for, but good. The wave had a pipeline curl, just about to crash on the tip of the jetty.
“And check out the gulls. What a rush, right?”
The seagulls were lit by the rays of the morning sun and stood out against the dark clouds behind them.
I sighed. “It’s a great shot, buddy, but what if one of those waves had knocked you off the jetty? Did you even think about that when you went out there?”
“That’s part of the excitement, don’t you think? I’ve never felt so alive. Did you see that wave knock me over? Wow.”
On cue, the gash in his forehead started bleeding more. I cleaned it up, spread some Neosporin on it, and applied a bandage from the first aid kit.
Toby didn’t stop talking. Mania or just an exuberant twenty year old? I’m not a shrink, but I decided on the latter.
I interrupted his chatter. “Toby, Aunt Carly said you went to her house in the middle of the n
ight and started going through her books. What was that all about?”
“When?”
I pushed gauze against some small, oozing cuts above his eyebrows. “Two weeks after Uncle Angelo died.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember. I knew I’d seen something that gave me a great idea for a photo shoot, but I couldn’t quite think what it was. You know, like tip of the tongue. Then I realized that it came from a book at Carly’s, so I went over there and went through the books. It was late at night, and I didn’t want to wake her up.”
“It wouldn’t have kept until morning?”
“Creativity, you know what I mean? I couldn’t take a chance that I’d forget.”
Where does creativity end and mental illness begin? I’ve often thought some artists—Christo and his wrapping of bridges in yellow sheets, for example—were crazy, just in an entertaining way.
I decided, however, that there was no conclusive evidence my son needed help. Not yet, anyway. Maybe I’d revisit the idea after the trial.
Chapter Thirteen
Louella was making progress. Her two goals were to get a feeling for Angelo and to uncover his ties to any organized crime syndicate that had its fingers in the DialUSA pie.
On a Monday afternoon, the Forest Grove Bar and Grill was closed, and the bartender, a tiny woman with blonde hair and dark eyebrows, announced that fact when Louella walked in.
“Sorry, ma’am, we’re closed.”
Louella glanced at a scruffy old man leaning over a beer in a back booth. The lights chased out any class that the place may have held at night, exposing the dirt in the cracks of the wood floor and the dust on the bottles. Every inch of space was filled with flasks, stickers, neon signs, and posters. An elk head looked ready to fall off the wall behind the bar, and the stale beer scent managed to overpower Louella’s impaired sense of smell.
She climbed onto a barstool. “I just have a few questions.”
“I’m Cindy. What’ll you have?”
So much for being closed. Louella looked over the bottles. “Uh … how about a Jagerade?”
Cindy turned and grabbed the green Jägermeister flask from the shelf and a bottle of Gatorade from the fridge. She mixed drinks for both of them. “Hip hooray for electrolytes.” She had a black leather apron, a lumberjack shirt, and a forearm covered with tattoos.
“Did you know Angelo Romero?” Louella asked.
“Oh yeah. He was a regular here. Until his wife pushed him off the cliff.”
“You think his wife did it?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Cindy pulled a wooden stool over and sat on it. “I guess that’s what you’re trying to figure out. I just know that if I was his wife, I’d kill him.”
“Why’s that?”
“He was here most nights. You wouldn’t even know he was married from the way he acted.”
“How much do you know about him?”
“Pretty much, actually. A lot of nights he got drunk, poured out his troubles to me, and closed the place out. At first, he was trying to get into my pants, but later he just wanted to talk.”
“What was he like?”
“Most people saw him as a sleazeball, but he was kind of sweet inside. When he was drunk, anyway. I think he tried to do the right thing, but he was ambitious. He was always thinking of ways to make a quick buck. You know the type.”
Louella sipped her drink, letting Cindy fill the silence.
“You know those phone scams you hear about? Identity theft, that kind of thing? He laughed about those, and I think maybe he was involved or something.”
“Sounds pretty sleazy to me.”
The bartender poured herself a whiskey. “Yeah, I don’t know.”
“Did he talk about his wife? How things were between them?”
“No, not at all. They were separated. He didn’t talk about her. They were all over with. He was having an affair. At least one.”
“Do you know who with?”
Cindy shook her head. “He never came here with her. But, you know, there were two things that were weird.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The first thing is that he didn’t come in here for two weeks. In November. Then he comes back, and you know why he wasn’t here?”
“Why’s that?”
“He’d gone on some long trip. He told me about it. Ready for this? First he goes to South Point on the Big Island.”
“Hawaii?”
“Right.”
“Then to Havasu, you know where that is?”
Louella shrugged. “Somewhere like Arizona.”
“Yeah, I think so. Then he went to someplace called La Kay something in Mexico.”
“Hold on.” Louella took out her phone. “La Paz?”
“No.”
“Martínez de la Torre?”
“No, no. Just la something.”
“La Quebrada?”
Cindy snapped her fingers. “Yeah, yeah. That’s it.”
“He say why? Why he went on that trip?”
“Not really.” She finished her drink. “I pressed him, ’cause it was weird, right? He just said he was, like, going to grad school, but that didn’t make sense.”
“What was the second thing?”
Cindy looked at the ceiling. “Second thing … oh, yeah, before he went, he was nervous. About something. He wouldn’t tell me what. I think the cops were onto him. He wasn’t relaxed like usual.”
Louella worked the gold mine for another hour, left her card and a tip, and headed home. After a nap, she decided she was done burning shoe leather for the day and let her fingers do the walking. The walking took place on her computer keyboard and her phone’s dial pad.
She saved the best for last, calling an old contact in the FBI.
“Benson.”
“Jeez, they haven’t kicked you out yet?”
“Badger! It’s been—what—ten years?”
“But you still know my voice.” She turned her office chair around and put her feet on an ottoman. Her husband had always kidded her about her ottoman fetish. She had at least twelve of the things.
Benson laughed. “I figured it was either you or Henry Kissinger. A few more years, and your voice will be so low humans won’t be able to hear it. What are you doing these days?”
They caught up and discussed the hate-crime murder they’d worked on together.
It’s now or never. “I’m working on something the FBI might be involved in. Could you—”
“Sorry, Louella. The answer is no. You should know that.”
“Hold on. I have something you guys might be interested in. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you the names of a company and a person, you ask around, and if someone is working on that, tell them I have something for them.”
“Why don’t you just tell me what you found?”
“Come on, Benson. Are you getting soft in your old age?” She took a drag on her cigarette.
“Right,” he said. “You want to trade. Okay, what are the names?”
“DialUSA and Angelo Romero.”
An hour after the call, her doorbell rang. She accessed the door camera and saw a tall man with a military haircut and a black windbreaker. He was alert yet relaxed.
She pressed the intercom button. “May I help you?”
“Special Agent Randolph Tick, ma’am, from the FBI.” He held his ID up to the camera.
“Just a minute, Agent Tick, I won’t be long.” She redialed her buddy Benson, who confirmed that her visitor was legit.
She went down the stairs and opened the door. She poked her head out and looked up and down the street. “Come on in. I hope you didn’t let anyone follow you here.”
“We’re good.” He walked behind her up the stairs. “Benson said you had some information.”
She sat at her desk, lit up a cigarette, and offered him one. He shook his head.
“Is that all he told you?”
“He said you wanted to trade, but I’m not authorized to tell you very m
uch.”
“I don’t need much.”
“What have you got?” he asked.
She told him about the back room at DialUSA. “I overheard a conversation. Here’s what I’d like to know: What kind of outfit are we dealing with here, and what was Angelo Romero’s involvement with it?”
“Is that all?”
“It’s not much, is it? His wife is accused of killing him, and I just want to know whether there are some heavies who might have done it. Whatever else you’ve got, I don’t care about it. Hopefully, Benson has already vouched for me.” She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head forward.
“He has.”
“Figured. So let me know if this might have been a mob hit or whatever, and I’ll tell you what I heard.”
“You working for the widow’s lawyer?” he asked.
Louella nodded.
Tick got up and walked to the window. He looked out for a while then came back. “Okay. I don’t know anything about Angelo Romero, but yes, DialUSA is involved with organized crime. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Fair enough. Here’s what I heard.” She described the conversation. “That helpful to you?”
Agent Tick waggled his hand. “It confirms some things, so that helps. You didn’t get a look at the technical guy, the guy you said sounded smaller.”
“No.”
“Okay,” he said. “But that he came from Ferndale is good info. Maybe that’s the best part. That lets us narrow things down a little.”
“I’m curious about what they’re doing. Guess you don’t want to share?”
He shook his head.
“Want to hear what I think?”
“Yeah.”
“I think they record someone talking, maybe during a telemarketing call, then they use some computer wizardry to make that voice say anything they want it to say. They use that to scam money from friends or family members of the owner of that voice.”
Tick laughed. “You’ve got an active imagination, Ms. Davis.”
She looked at him. His laugh seemed forced.
At the door, Agent Tick stopped. “Ms. Davis, these are bad people we’re dealing with. Benson said you can take care of yourself, and I don’t have to tell you that you should be careful.”
