California Girl (15 page)

Great, thought David. Like Hambly had conjured the meeting. Given him his first chance at betrayal.

Nixon smiled when he saw David, shook his hand. They made small talk there in the driveway for a minute. Nixon was interested in how the church was growing. He had that undistractable intensity that drew people, made them believe he was involved and concerned. Their man.

“Good luck in November, sir,” said David.

Nixon nodded solemnly. “I hope for the best. But I do wish I could see more eye-to-eye with the JBS, David. I know your father and Roger Stoltz are disappointed. I am, too.”

“They’ll support you.”

“It isn’t that.”

David saw something dark pass across the former vice president’s face. Dick had always seemed actively haunted.

“Good night, sir.”

“Regards to Barbara and the children.”

“And ours back to Pat.”

It was only six but Max appeared inebriated. Held a huge tumbler half full of gin and ice as evidence. Shot up from his blue recliner with a smile and his free hand extended. The old living room. So many memories. Cronkite and the body count for today: seventeen.

Monika smiled when she saw him come in. The same polite replica that had replaced her true smile the moment she’d heard about Clay.
David leaned over, hugged her, and kissed her cheek. The bones in her back seemed large.

“Did you see Dick?” she asked.

“Said hi in the driveway.”

“He’s going to win but he won’t forget us,” she said. “He’s from Orange County. From good people. And he’ll be a huge improvement over Johnson.”

David pulled up a dining room chair, sat between them.

Max told David all about his workday at RoMar Industries today. How Marie Stoltz
nominally
ran the operation but needed Max to get things accomplished. Shipped eight thousand barrels last week, lost a flatcar halfway across Texas, nobody hurt but four hundred thousand gallons of Orange Sunshine wasted on tumbleweeds and armadillos, be the shiniest armadillos God ever saw.

“Drink, son?”

“No thanks, Dad.”

“Time for a refill.”

Max steered to the kitchen. Monika held David’s hand, looking from him to the TV and back again. But mostly at the TV.

“How have you been, Mom?”

She patted his hand. “Just so busy. You know.”

He really didn’t know. Her children were grown and she didn’t work. Max was gone forty hours a week at RoMar. She had no hobbies. And few interests except for the Birch Society meetings and publications.

Max lowered back into his chair, drink raised for balance.

“I’m working a few hours a week at the bookstore,” she said.

The American Opinion Bookstore, David knew. Official JBS propaganda outlet. Books on Communist takeovers and how the United Nations was a waste of time and money, how the Russians wanted America to fall. Until a couple of years ago the clerks would grouse about the tax when they rang up a sale. Because the California sales tax went to Governor Pat Brown, a Democrat. The clerks liked to say, If it’s brown, flush it. David actually believed a lot of what the JBS said. Just
didn’t like the way they thought they were right and everybody else was stupid.

“Four hours, actually,” she said. “But you know, son. One thing leads to another. Not enough hours in the day. You?”

David told them about Barbara’s youth league and Matthew’s language skills, Rachel’s brave toddling, and Wendy’s supernal calm as an older sister. For a few minutes he was able to appreciate his wife and children from a distance, in the telling of their virtues. And to forget Hambly and his pictures and the colossal stupidity of what he had done.

He drove away slowly, lost in thought. Prayed to get through this. Realized that you could drive across the entire continent never seeing farther than the beams of your headlights. Wondered if there might be a sermon in that metaphor.

Faith as your headlight.

THAT NIGHT
in bed David lay trembling in Barbara’s arms and told her what had happened with Special Agent Hambly. The breath caught in her throat when he said that Hambly had code-named him
Judas.
She used an oath that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

She made ferocious but tender love to him. She seemed to almost inhabit him at times like this. To feel what he was feeling.

After, she drew a warm bath and led him to it. She lit candles in the darkened bathroom. With her knees on a folded towel she leaned over the tub to work the shampoo into a lather, scrub the sponge up and down his back. And later to cup the handfuls of fresh water over his head.

“It may be time to settle on a partner,” she said.

“I want you to take over if anything happens.”

“No, David. We would lose the congregation. Properly prepared, they’ll follow another man. But they won’t stay with a woman.”

“I feel like giving up.”

“Of course you do,” she said. “But in the morning you won’t. You’re
a fighter and a warrior and a man of God. You have power in your heart. I’ve seen you down and you always get back up. Always.”

He felt the water running down his head. Heard the splash of it around him. Smelled the soap and conditioner and melting candle wax.

“I’ve narrowed down the candidates to two,” said Barbara. “Either would be fine. Edmond has age and intelligence. Whitbrend has youth and ambition. They would both bring modest congregations. They’re both amenable to the base agreement and incentive scale and escalators. They’re both keenly aware that the way the congregation is growing, the sky is the limit, and that television will take us there. Literally. Look, David, here we are hardly moved into the new chapel and it’s time to think about a larger one. The television ministry that you are so afraid of? It must happen, David. It will take your congregation from a thousand to millions.
Millions.
You are a very powerful and charismatic minister, Reverend Becker. You have a responsibility to provide for your worshipers like you do for your family. As an employer would for his workers.”

“I know.”

She wiggled one of his earlobes. “And you should benefit from your hard work like anyone else. God in heaven certainly does.”

“I don’t presume to understand Him.”

“No. You’re right. I won’t, either.”

He sighed. Listened to the music of water hitting water.

“Call the younger one tomorrow morning,” he said quietly. “Whitbrend. He had an interesting look in his eye.”

JANELLE VONN’S PALE BLUE
Volkswagen Beetle sat in the shade of the impound yard. Hood up, engine compartment open, a layer of windblown dust on the windows. Nick and Lucky Lobdell looked down on it in the brisk fall morning.

It was Monday, October 14, thirteen days after the murder of Janelle Vonn. Nick could feel his case was cooling off. His evidence wasn’t adding up. The clues still out there had scurried under rocks and were going to be harder and harder to find.

He was losing his momentum in this case and he knew it. Made his guts feel jerky and his head feel crowded.

And all of this after he was sure he’d caught the break he needed. When Red turned out to be the Reverend David and Ho turned out to be Janelle’s benefactor Howard Langton. An absolute gift from heaven, delivered by his own brother, Andy.

But even that had dribbled off into uselessness. The date—David and Barbara, Howard and Linda, Janelle and whatever guy she might choose—had been canceled. No one knew why. The evening itself would have been nothing unusual. They had had dinner dates before.

So Nick couldn’t escape the sinking feeling in his guts. First-case jinx? Maybe he wasn’t ready for his own case? Maybe he was too careful?

Maybe he didn’t have the experience to connect things or ask the right questions. Maybe he didn’t have the stamina it took to miss your wife and kids and not sleep well and go over the same bits of evidence over and over and over. He thought of Sharon and his whole soul groaned. Because he missed her, too, and because he wished he’d never touched her.

And maybe it was just him, but Nick thought the captain was humoring him at the homicide detail wrap on Friday. And the assistant sheriff was subtly dismissing his efforts at the Crime Against Persons roll call on Thursday.

“What exactly are we doing?” asked Lobdell.

“I wanted to see this car again.”

Lobdell ran his finger across a back window. Left a dark streak in the dust.

“Your case,” said Lobdell.

“Yeah, I know.”

Nick stood by the driver’s-side door and read again the responding officer’s report on a suspicious vehicle. Filed five days after the murder. Lemon Heights Sporting Goods owner made the call, said the car had been in the lot out front since the night in question. Hadn’t moved. He had seen it come across the lot that night, late, maybe nine. Cute little Beetle. Shiny under the lights. Went to the far side of the parking lot where there weren’t any cars. The owner looked out a few minutes later and saw the car still there and this girl standing beside a white Caddy talking to the driver. Got in the Caddy about ten minutes after nine and the car drove off.

Lemon Heights Sporting Goods was in a shopping center less than two hundred yards from the SunBlesst packinghouse.

The Beetle was only one year old. Nine thousand miles according to the impound report. No dents that Nick could see. Good tread on the tires. He checked the tread grooves for the odd bit of gravel or dirt that might be revealing. Found nothing.

Lobdell shook his head and sighed. “I gotta call Shirley.”

Nick sat on the passenger side and looked at the fingerprint dust on the dash, door handles and window cranks, the shifter, hand brake, and steering wheel. The silver powder showed up best on the black plastic. All the prints had been processed. All were Janelle’s.

Nick got down on his knees with a magnifier and tweezers and went over the floor mats. ID had done it once but he wanted to do it again. Hair. Fiber. Small gravel. The bright red point of what looked like a liquidambar or maple leaf. October, he thought, right color for the time of year. He didn’t collect, he just looked. Then the passenger’s side and the back. Nothing unusual.

He sat in the front passenger seat. The glove compartment had a pair of sunglasses, a small pump bottle of Orange Sunshine air freshener, and a clear plastic makeup bag. Inside the bag Nick found base and blush, three lipsticks. Two brushes, two eyeliner pencils, and mascara.

He sprayed the air freshener toward the open door and whiffed. The smell was faint and familiar. Sprayed some on his fingertips and rubbed it with his thumb. Not strong, really. Just a hint of orange blossom. Sprayed and rubbed again. No, not like those late winter mornings when all of Tustin used to smell that way. Paradise would be like that. Nick had always thought if he could bottle that smell he could make a million. His mother used to say so. He and Clay had tried it one day, mashing up the blossoms and adding water. By the next morning, through some alchemical magic that bewildered them, the solution retained no smell whatsoever. But here in sixty-eight, thought Nick, somebody had finally captured a little of that smell.

He saw that Janelle had replaced her Blaupunkt radio with a Craig eight-track tape player/radio combination. Pretty nice one. Eighty, a hundred bucks installed. There was a shoe box of tapes on the passenger-side floor. Nick looked at the titles and set it down.

The side map pouches had more eight-tracks. A pencil and two pens. Two books of matches—Five Crowns from her job a year ago, and one from Bob’s Big Boy. No maps.

The ashtray contained an alligator roach clip with a decorative thong
of leather and three beads attached. The tray itself had a light dusting of ash.

Nick got out and lifted the front trunk door. Neat and practically empty. A spare tire, jumper cables, and a first-aid kit. The engine compartment was clean, no leaks or bad hoses that he could see. Nick looked at the tiny little motor. Air-cooled and practically powerless. A guy at his high school put radiator coolant in the oil reservoir, blew his engine. You could get a new VW for under two grand and they went forever on a tank of gas. But gas was cheap and there was no way to argue with V-8 power.

Nick got pliers and a flat-tip screwdriver from his kit and sat in the passenger seat. Pried off the door trim panel. Looked where the stoners liked to hide their stash. No stash, just the door latch assembly and the window crank with its toothed gear swabbed with grease.

He worked the trim panel back into place.

Lobdell ambled over from the yard office. “They already looked there.”

“Get off my back, Lucky.”

“We got the last three saw stores to check.”

Nick drove. He could feel the tension coming off Lobdell, low-voltage but steady.

“What’s up?” Nick asked.

“Kevin said some bad things to his mother. I won’t tolerate it under my roof. Kid can say what he wants to me. But Shirley, shit. Shirley lives for that boy.”

IN THE FIRST
three days after the murder, Nick and Lobdell had found twenty-six Orange County stores that sold the Garden Forge Trim-Quick pruning saw. When they factored in south Los Angeles and north San Diego Counties, the number got up to almost a hundred. So far they had gotten through twenty-three. Three leads had proved fruitless. One still working. They had started with the stores closest to the SunBlesst packinghouse in Tustin. Now they were almost up to the Los An
geles County line, Nick increasingly pissed off that nothing was connecting up for him.

Nick drove and Lobdell looked out the window.

None of the clerks at Canning’s Hardware in La Habra remembered selling a Trim-Quick recently.

The owner of a nursery in Fullerton sold one to a young mother with two children just last week.

A garden supplies manager at the Sears, Roebuck over by Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park had sold one Trim-Quick to a man in shorts and a straw gardener’s hat two Sundays ago. The Sunday before Janelle was murdered, thought Nick.

“I’ve seen him in here before,” said the manager. “Always Sundays. Don’t know his name. Nice fella. Brown hair, neat mustache, medium height and weight. Didn’t see much of his face that day, because of the hat.”

Maybe that was the point, thought Nick. He remembered that two Sundays ago it was ninety degrees.

“Guess his age.”

“Thirty-five to forty. He also got snail bait, a flat of marigolds, potting soil, and a hand trowel. Paid cash, so don’t ask me to find the check.”

“Maybe you’d call me if you see him in here again,” said Nick. He supplied a card and the manager put it in the pocket of his blue apron.

They were walking back out of the garden section of Sears when Nick saw the entire room tilt left, then right again. Like a ship. He stopped, braced himself. Lifted his arms for balance. Then lowered them to his side, embarrassed.

“What gives?” huffed Lobdell.

“Balance a little off.”

Like getting hit on the head by Ethan. Fourteen years ago and still not quite right. Never told anybody and maybe should have. To his irritation Nick watched a row of potted rhododendrons scoot forward, then move back. All six in unison. Like a dance step. Slick.

He breathed deeply, shook his head. Looked at Lobdell and felt better.

“I got conked when I was a kid,” he said. “Every once in a while I just lose my balance for a second.”

“Great,” said Lobdell. “Hope it doesn’t happen when you’re covering my butt with your forty-five.”

“I could only cover part of it anyway,” said Nick. He laughed but Lobdell didn’t. “Monkey Wards is next.”

By the time they finished striking out at Wards, Nick wasn’t sure if he was really walking or not. The merchandise in the aisles was going past him but he wasn’t aware of moving his legs or feet. The products advanced, reds and yellows and blues coming at high speed, then curlicuing upward like colored smoke and vanishing into the ceiling. A set of wrenches glided slowly through the room.

Outside the sunlight wavered in an orange mirage. Lobdell was talking as they made the car. Nick could hardly understand the words but he could see them wobbling through the air toward him like balloons filled with water.

“I don’t feel right, Lucky.”

“You’re acting wrong, Nick. The fuck’d you have for breakfast?”

“Katy made pancakes and eggs. Onions in the eggs.”

“I’ll drive.”

“Thanks.”

THEY MADE
the 11:45
A.M.
meeting with Captain Frank del Gado. Nick couldn’t look him in the eye for more than a second or two. Del Gado’s skin ran off like melting wax and Nick felt an urge to giggle. Even with the office door closed Nick heard things from the other side with startling volume and clarity. He felt that his ears had grown to huge proportion. Felt the bones in his face growing.

Lobdell had agreed to do the talking. “We just wanted to follow up on this rumor about the beauty queen being on the narcotics payroll,” he said.

Del Gado was a sleek sixty, black hair combed straight back from a widow’s peak. Goddamned Eddie Munster, thought Nick.

“Yeah,” said del Gado. “So?”

“How long?” asked Lobdell.

“We worked with her during that thing with her brothers. We thought she might be helpful with where the pills and pot were coming from, and she was. All of her brothers were tied up with the Hessians. You get bikers, you get amphetamines. They make the damned things, zoom around the country distributing. Anyway, when the brother thing was over, we kept her on. You’d be amazed what people offered Miss Tustin, age eighteen.”

“Was she using?” Nick managed.

Del Gado’s gaze seemed eternal. “Enough to gain the confidence of certain people. Informants are free to do what they want. Within limits.”

“How high up the ladder was she?” asked Lobdell. “Big boys, medium-sized, what?”

Del Gado tapped a Zippo on his desktop. Painfully loud. Nick jumped, rising from his chair to cover it and hoping the captain hadn’t seen. He went to the window, looked out, then casually sat back down.

“Not big,” del Gado said, looking at Nick.

“What did you pay her?” asked Lobdell.

“It varied. Up to three hundred a month.”

“That’s pretty good money for nothing big,” said Lobdell. Nick actually heard the words before they were spoken.

“Sometimes she was useful.”

“Sir,” said Nick. “We need to talk to those drug people. Her connections and sources and friends. If one of them found out she was a snitch, that’s a motive to kill her.” He lurched up and went to the window again, hoping he looked upset and serious. Took a deep breath, fighting the smile off his face.

“Talk to Troy Gant,” said del Gado. “He’s waiting outside.”

GANT WAS SHORT
and grubby. Stringy yellow hair, an attempted mustache, beat-up jeans and a loose sweatshirt with the sleeves cut out. He looked eighteen, maybe twenty. He looked at Lobdell with an openly
hopeless expression. Turned his soft blue eyes on Nick and stared right through him.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s motate.”

“Motate,” said Nick. “Like ‘move’ and ‘activate.’”

“Right on, Sarge.”

Gant led them down a hallway past a watercooler and a fire alarm box. Then into an empty conference room. A movie screen at one end, projector at the other. A tape recorder sat on one of the three horseshoed tables.

Gant shut the door. “You gotta be real careful here,” he said. “Janelle was working with some people. I’m working with some of the same people. You want to talk to them, talk to them. They can’t hurt her now. But you ask your questions just a little wrong, mix up something she could have told you for something only I could know and guess what, man—I’m seriously fuckin’ blown. Let me tell you two guys something. Narcotics isn’t about fun anymore. It isn’t about young people experimenting anymore. It isn’t about cosmic consciousness, no matter what the Brotherhood of Eternal Love says. It’s about big dollars and strong dope. It’s about permanently scrambled eggs and overdoses that stop your heart cold. It’s about distribution and profit and getting product on the street so every man, woman, and child can fork over the cash and turn on. Laguna? Janelle’s world? Bad people doing bad shit. Even del Gado underestimates it. Clear on that?”

“I think we can handle it,” said Lobdell.

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” said Gant. “You thinking you can handle it because you’re a big tough dude from homicide. You don’t know piss about narco.”