A Small Matter (23 page)

“Quiet,” Vickie said. “We all need to stay
calm. Dalk’s right--it may turn out to be nothing.”

“Awww!” Dalk said.

“What?” Vickie snapped.

“My badge--it’s missing. I had it on my belt
when I went in to get Mulroney--I thought it might keep people from
questioning my actions. It must have come loose when I struggled
with the lady guard at the exit. That means they have it--and they
know who I am! Not only that, I don’t have my wallet with me--I
left it in the Mercedes!”

“Let Toyama get out and explain,” Vickie
said.

“Toyama has no license--he’s here in the
country illegally!”

“You never told me that before!” Vickie said.
“What’s he doing driving?”

“Should I pull over, or not?” Toyama
said.

“I don’t know,” Dalk said. “If he’s
responding to the kidnap alert, we’re in a lot of trouble,
here.”

“Toyama,” Vickie said. “Hit it!”

“No!” Dalk yelled. “We can’t outrun him! We
have to wait and find out why he stopped us!”

“He might lie to us until his backup
arrives,” Vickie said. “He might believe you’re a cop who’s
possibly committed a serious felony. This is insane! We don’t know!
Maybe it’s Toyama's stupid red light. We don’t know, but it doesn’t
matter--we can’t afford to be stopped no matter what. We’re at the
crossroads. There’s no going back. Listen to me--we’ve got
four-wheel drive and he doesn’t--it’s muddy over there in the
mountains--we can lose him on the first slick dirt road. I know
these trails like the back of my hand. Jack and I hiked every last
one of them. They’ll never find us in there. Now you’ve got to
trust me! We can’t let them arrest us--if we do, we’ll lose
Mulroney for good!”

“Listen to her, Dalk,” Toyama said. “This is
a very bright woman, who sees clearly the paradox she faces.
There’s an old Japanese proverb--The Only Way to Keep the Gas Tank
Full is to Never Go Anywhere--But Standing Still is Not an
Option.”

“Whatever that means,” Dalk said. “We also
have a saying--In For a Penny, In For a Pound--hit it, Toyama!”

The Suburban roared to life, its
three-hundred and ninety horses stampeding for all they were worth.
The results were so spectacular at first, nobody dared to breathe.
Toyama raced around the cars on the off-ramp and blew off the red
light before sliding onto Mulholland heading west, tires smoking,
brutally engaging the curves and straights in a striking display of
daring, ignoring conventional wisdom regarding the capacity of the
human body to withstand g-forces. Kilkenney yawped loudly as a
surge of anticipatory energy flooded his caged body. Vickie eyed
the speedometer needle, planted squarely on 110, the information
crashing in on her senses, she understanding that
one-hundred-ten-miles-per-hour on this road, in this vehicle, was
theoretically impossible, and yet it was happening. Toyama, the
Japanese master, somehow on a different plane than everybody else
in the known universe, perhaps from a lifetime of meditation, or a
hundred thousand hours of working under the forced-pace, high
information-input rates of martial arts combat sparring, had
morphed into the world’s greatest driver and lost the CHP pursuit
car completely, the cop in the car behind them suffering some
unseen and unexplained breakdown of human performance under the
heavy load of attempting to keep up with the wide-eyed little
sensei behind the wheel of the flying three-ton machine.

Slowing, finally, before being directed by
Vickie to turn off Mulholland onto a posh Bel-Air residential
street, heading south once again, Toyama made his way past an
orderly hodgepodge of mini-mansions which sat atop the westerly
running ridge which neatly divided the Valley from Greater Los
Angeles. Vickie co-piloted the Suburban purposefully to the end of
the block before instructing Toyama to hop the curb, thereupon
crossing a muddy, plowed firebreak before swinging onto the
rain-slicked fire road leading into the heart of the sweet, damp
mountains. Toyama's superior driving skills had rendered their
evasion from unjust arrest a done deal. It was awhile before
anybody spoke.

“Nice driving,” Dalk said. “But we’d better
keep it moving. If the CHP saw us go in here, they’ll be sending
Air Support by for a look any minute.”

“Our best chance,” Vickie said, “is to ditch
the Suburban at a place I know up ahead and head down to the bottom
of the canyon on foot.”

“Are you crazy?” Mary-Jo said.

“I’m being practical,” Vickie said. “We’ve
felony-evaded the police. I don’t have to tell you what that
means.”

“Yes you do,” she said. “What does it
mean?”

“It might mean dogs,” Dalk said. “It’s what
they use to chase felons who escape into the mountains.”

“What?” Mary-Jo said. “We’re going to be
chased by police dogs?”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Dalk said.
“They won’t bite you unless you move.”

“I’ll say there’s nothing to be scared of,”
Vickie said. She reached into the glove box and pulled out
Mulroney’s revolver--if some stinking dog tries to bite me, I’ll
give him some of this!”

“Help!” Mary-Jo cried.

Dalk, adjusting carefully the blankets before
unloading Mulroney, again slung the big man across his shoulders
and headed for the steep ravine leading to the bottom of the
canyon.

“Somebody grab the cat,” he said, without
looking back.

Chapter 35

“I can’t do this,” Mary-Jo shouted down at
the departing crew. “The clouds are building up again and it’s
going to rain. I have a fear of snakes. I’m scared and I’m going
back.” She stood next to the Suburban at the edge of the muddy fire
road in her hot-pink platform wedgies, a portrait of uncertainty
facing the vast wilderness of primeval territory which divided into
two distinct halves the mighty metropolis of Los Angeles--a
wilderness home, as it were, not only to Hollywood producers, with
which she was familiar and unafraid of, but also to other types of
animals, which she was afraid of, including mountain lions,
coyotes, skunks, bobcats, spiders, scorpions, bats and not a few
poisonous snakes.

“It’s okay, Mary-Jo,” Vickie shouted from
somewhere down below, her body already obscured by the thick
hillside brush. “Take the Suburban south down the fire road--in
about five or six miles, you’ll come out in the hills north of
Sunset. Head back to Dalk’s new place and wait for us there.”

“How will I know where you are?” she
said.

“We’ll call you.”

“I’m sorry, Dalk” Mary-Jo said. “I hope I’m
not disappointing you. Good luck!”

“I love you!” he shouted. The three most
important words on earth echoed up from his position, and greatly
helped take up the emotional slack between them.

A moment passed before the party descending
down the well-worn, rooty, deer trail heard the muffled rumble of
the Suburban above them--the echoing roar growing fainter until at
last they were alone with themselves in the middle of the
mountain.

“Mary-Jo has sold over 300 homes in Pacific
Palisades and Santa Monica,” Dalk said. “But she’s never been in
these mountains. She’s seen the wilderness, of course, at least the
beginnings of it from where it abuts the backyards of rich people’s
houses, but she’s never actually been out here personally.”

“Don’t apologize for Mary-Jo,” Vickie said.
“She’s a trooper--we can’t blame her for not wanting to come. She
wasn’t dressed for the occasion. Besides, she’s afraid of
snakes.”

“They’re all hibernating,” Toyama said.

“What difference does it make what the slimy
things are doing?” Vickie said. “When you’re scared of snakes,
you’re scared of snakes--it doesn’t matter if they’re
underground--in fact, that makes it even more frightening, knowing
they’re somewhere underneath your feet, waiting to spring out at
you from their slick little holes.”

“Back to the subject at hand,” Dalk said, his
breathing labored as he carefully picked his steps, “do we have a
plan, here, or were you simply planning to force me to wander
through the mountains forever with Mulroney on my back--which, I
might add, I can’t keep up much longer, no matter how much
meditation I’ve practiced. And may I say, Mary-Jo was right--the
way those low clouds are closing in, we’re going to be caught in
another downpour. I don’t want Mulroney’s blankets to get wet.”

“I know where I’m going,” Vickie said. “And
don’t worry about the rain--we’re going to a nice, dry cave--can
you keep going a little farther without collapsing?”

“I can make it to the bottom, if I’m
careful,” Dalk said. “And maybe a little further after that.”

“There’s a Chumash Indian site at the bottom
of this ravine,” Vickie said. “It’s a place Jack and I used to come
all the time when we really wanted to get away from it all. Not
many people know about it--it’s got a waterfall, and a cave behind
the waterfall--we can hide from the rain behind it. We’ll make
Mulroney comfortable in the cave. If we get hungry, we might find a
few steelhead trout in the stream.”

“Steelhead trout in the middle of L.A.?”
Toyama said.

“The good news is,” Dalk said, “we’ll
probably make it to the cave before the rain starts falling. The
bad news is, we could find ourselves washed out to sea by a raging
flash flood at any time after it starts falling.”

“I think we’re alone,” Toyama said. “I don’t
think that CHP ever saw us make the turnoff. He’s probably chasing
his tail. He doesn’t know where we are.” Toyama struggled to keep
up, he being in charge of the leashed Maine Coon, said beast not
buying the idea of a linear descent to the bottom but choosing
instead the ancient, safer method of jumping behind every bush
before proceeding, and requiring a fair amount of leash untangling
and coaxing to continue to the next one.

“We better hurry if we want to make the
cave,” Vickie said. “It’ll be dark soon.”

The party of four, plus cat, scurried down
the trail, engulfed by the universality and impartiality of the
wilderness world, the roar of the stream bed growing louder as they
neared the bottom, the rushing water offering to them its
indiscriminate invitation, not asking what they were up to, or
expecting anything from them, its cushioning sound enabling them to
focus on something besides the rampant anxiety each of them felt
for their comatose friend, who, separated from them by the
uncrossable gulf of unconsciousness, accepted their assistance and
their agenda without judgment, or any other thing.

Chapter 36

“Apparently, the Chumash, when they sat
around their fire at night,” Dalk said, “drank a lot of Bud Light.
I find that surprising, because I always thought they lived off the
land.”

The cave behind the waterfall, accessed
easily across a pathway of well-placed boulders, the room being
itself of a decent size, and presently dry and uninhabited, in
addition to serving as the repository for several hundred crushed,
empty beer cans, also served as a venue for visiting graffiti
artists, who, perhaps while sitting by the fire and singing the
traditional Chumash folk songs, suddenly sensed the need for
something greater and thus created the high-color ethereal
gobbledygook which covered every exposed surface.

“It was never like this when Jack and I used
to come here,” Vickie said.

“That was before all-terrain vehicles,” Dalk
said. “Now any punk can come here.”

The roar of the falls feeding the wellspring
of the canyon stream, now swollen from the recent rains, had a
lyrical quality to it which lifted the spirits of the group,
lessening among them the feeling of being separate from one another
and encouraging feelings of interconnectedness with all things as
each individual began to feel their emotions gently coaxed into
line with the timeless music of the water--in short, it was a great
place to hang out, and, weather permitting, resurrect somebody.

“Give me that gun,” Dalk said. Vickie handed
it over--he took it, fitting it into his belt.

Toyama stirred the fire pit and upon finding
a few dry branches in the back of the cave, aided additionally by a
few discarded cardboard beer boxes, proceeded to light a fire,
helped in the process by a gold Zippo. Kilkenney, upon seeing the
flames rise, hissed and danced upon his leash until Vickie, having
pity, cradled him in her arms, stroking him soothingly.

Dalk carefully cleared space beside the fire
and laid Mulroney gently out, carefully adjusting the blankets to
ensure his friend’s warmth and comfort.

Vickie set Kilkenney on his feet. “That’s
it,” she said. “I’m setting him free. From now on, no more leash,
no more cage--no more civilization.”

The cat poised without moving, sniffing the
air briefly, waiting for enough information, his heavy cerebellum
processing the million-or-so possible previously genetically stored
responses to being held captive in a cave with four people who’d
built a fire. The calculation complete, he sprang forward, exiting
the cave in the speed of an eye-blink without saying good-bye.

“I’ll miss him,” Vickie said. “He was the
heart and soul of Mulroney. Those two were each one of a kind--big,
powerful, but capable of true tenderness--and misunderstood by the
world around them.”

“I’m calling Mary-Jo,” Dalk said,
unholstering his phone and leaving the cave.

“I had my doubts up there on the road,”
Vickie said to Toyama. “I started to feel that I was running away
from my problems. I almost decided that we should take Mulroney
back to the hospital and turn him over to Dr. Lerner and let fate
take its course. What scared me was the thought that we might be
doing more harm than good by taking Mulroney away from the hospital
environment. I mean, what if his system crashes? There’s nobody
here who can bring him back.”

“Everybody has a time to die,” Toyama said.
“Until that time, nobody can take your life. When that time comes,
nobody can save it. This society lives under a delusion that we are
separate from one another--the truth is, we’re all connected. We’re
all made from the same stardust. The idea that doctors save us is a
way we have of saying that we can cheat death if we want to--but
it’s not so, so stop worrying about the choice you made. Whether
Mulroney lives or dies isn’t up to us--it’s up to God.”