Self-Defense (24 page)

Turning his hand into a blade, he sliced
air.

“The new stuff, once you get the feel,
it’s like hydroplaning. You can drive out to Zuma or County Line and see kids
that are basically Jesus walking on water.”

“Sounds like you did a bit of water work
yourself.”

“Still do.” He grinned and handed me my receipt.
“No second childhood for me, ’cause I never got out of my first.”

The chimes sounded. A dark-haired woman
had opened the door and stuck her foot in.

“I need help, Tom.”

She was tall and nice-looking with a
narrow, graceful figure and long thin arms with some muscle definition. Her
hair was wavy and very short, almost black, her eyes so light they seemed
pupil-less. The sun had cured her face to tight bronze leather. She wore
high-cut pink shorts that exposed long smooth legs. Her blouse was white and
sleeveless and tucked in snugly.

Tom said, “Just finishing up a sale,
babe.”

She didn’t smile or answer, just kept
standing there in the door. I heard a powerful engine idling and looked out to
see a white Ford van conversion, smoke puffing from its rear.

The woman cleared her throat.

Tom said, “Here you go, pal, enjoy ’em.”

I left the store, taking as long as
possible to get back to the Seville. Once in the car, I sat behind the wheel
pretending to look for something. A few seconds later Tom Shea came out of the
shop and followed his wife to the van. She got behind the wheel and closed the
driver’s door and a metal ramp slid out from the rear of the vehicle. It
touched the asphalt and I heard it scrape. Tom opened the rear door and reached
in, back muscles bunching, as he pulled on something. A moment later an
electric wheelchair appeared in the doorway, bearing a slumping, bronze-haired
boy.

Tom guided the chair down the ramp. I
started the Seville and inched out, watching. The boy could have been anywhere
from twelve to twenty. His head was large and it lolled, eyes wide, tongue
extended. His shrunken body was belted into the chair. Despite the restraint,
he slanted sharply to the right, the head almost touching his right shoulder.
One arm was belted, too. The other clutched a joystick at the front of the
chair.

Tom wasn’t smiling. He said something, and
the joystick hand moved. The chair rolled down the ramp, very slowly, and when
it was on the asphalt Tom closed the van door. Then he got behind the chair and
guided it up the cement slope toward the store. The van’s engine cut off and
Gwen Shea came around, sprinted up ahead, and held the store door. As Tom eased
the chair through, I caught a glimpse of the boy’s face. Sleepy, but grinning.
Big grin, almost voracious.

His hair a thick, straight mat, the kind
that might turn silver-minnow when it aged.

But he reminded me of more than his
father.

As I drove away, I realized what it was.

The grin. Triumphant, cartoonish.

He was an atrophied version of the surfer
on the sign.

Years ago, the mother of a severely
brain-damaged child sat in my hospital office and cried for half an hour
without break. When she finally stopped, she said, “I love her, but God forgive
me, sometimes I want her to die.” She never cried again in my presence, and
whenever we passed in the hall she looked away from me with a face that was
part despair, part rage.

The same face Gwen Shea wore.

The idea of approaching her about a
twenty-one-year-old disappearance seemed ridiculous and cruel. What reason did
I have to believe Best wasn’t just an old man deluded by hope?

I caught a green light and sped out of
Malibu into the Palisades, making my way to Rockingham Avenue and possibly more
delusions.

The house was a sizable two-story Tudor
with pink roses and blue agapanthus along the front and a low hedge of waxy
privet bordering the brick walkway. A white Ford Taurus with a rental sticker
sat in the driveway. Ken Lowell answered the door wearing a blue suit and
holding a Filofax. His shoes were shined and his hair was wet.

“Morning, just on my way out.”

He let me into a parqueted foyer. A
statuary-marble center table held a black vase full of white silk flowers.
Behind it, the stairway was a softly curving arc of polished oak.

The front rooms on either side were dark
and vaulted, shaded by heavy cream damask drapes and filled with gleaming
furniture.

“Nice repo,” I said.

Ken nodded. “The owners cut out to Europe
overnight. Food in the fridge and clothes in the closet. Some kind of shopping
center deal that went bad. People are looking for them.”

“Been seeing a lot of that lately?”

“More than usual for the last couple of
years. It’s what we specialize in. We pick them up from the bank, rehab them,
and turn them around. I guess that makes us capitalist exploiters.” He smiled
and picked out one of the silk flowers. “It’s not what I thought I’d be doing
when I was in Berkeley.”

“What were you interested in then?”

“My sister Jo was an archaeology major;
she turned me on to old bones. After she graduated, she went to Nepal to climb
around and explore. I flew there to be with her and we hung out together in
Katmandu—place called Freak Street, Telegraph Avenue transplanted to the
Himalayas.” He shook his head and looked at the flower. “I was with her when
she died.”

“What happened?” I said.

“We were hiking. She was experienced, very
athletic. This was just a stroll for her. But she put her foot down and
something gave way and she fell over a hundred feet. I was way behind. She
passed right by me as she went down, landed on a ledge full of sharp rocks.” He
touched his eyes and pressed down on the lids. Then his hands flew to his
lapels.

A door opened on the upstairs landing, and
Lucy came down the stairs.

“Morning,” she said, looking at Ken.
“Everything okay?”

“Everything’s great.” He smiled and
buttoned his jacket. “I should be back around six. Don’t worry about your car,
I’ll have it brought over.” A wave, and he was gone.

“Looks like you’re being well taken care
of,” I said.

“He’s a sweet guy.” She looked at the
living room. “Not too shabby for a hideout, huh? Can I get you something to
drink?”

“No, thanks.”

“Would you like to talk outside? It’s nice
in here, but I find it a little gloomy.”

The backyard was generous, with a
pork-chop-shaped swimming pool and waterfall spa. A brick patio running along
the rear of the house contained a table and chairs and potted plants that
needed watering. The neighboring properties were blocked from view by tall
honeysuckle hedges and billowing mounds of plumbago.

We sat. Lucy crossed her legs and looked
up at the sky. Her eyes were tired, and she seemed to be fighting tears.

“What is it?” I said.

“I can’t stop thinking about Puck.”

After a second’s debate, I said, “He
called your—called Lowell two days ago to tell him you were in the hospital. He
obviously cares about you, but something’s keeping him out of town.”

Her legs uncrossed and her head shot
forward. “Why would he call
him—
how do you know this?”

“Lowell phoned me, wanting to talk about
you. I told him I couldn’t without your permission.”

“That’s crazy. Why would Puck call
him
?”

“He knew you were at Woodbridge.”

“He must have found out some—absurd. I
don’t understand
any
of this.”

“I got the impression Puck had been in
contact with him.”

She stared at me, then lowered her head,
as if ashamed.

“He told me Puck had a drug problem,” I
said. “I didn’t assume it was true, but Milo checked it out.”

Her mouth opened, then closed. Her
fingernails scraped the glass top of the table, and my short hairs rose.

“
Damn
him.
He had no right—why did
Milo
have to do that?”

“For your sake. And Puck’s. We couldn’t
understand why he couldn’t come back to see you, figured he might be in some
kind of trouble. How long’s he been addicted?”

“He—I don’t know, exactly. He started
smoking grass in prep school. By the time he started Tufts he was already into...
the bad stuff. He had to drop out in his junior year because a campus policeman
caught him shooting up in a dorm room. After that he didn’t care and just hit
the streets. The police kept picking him up for vagrancy, and the system kept
spitting him back. He tried to get help—student health, free clinics, private
doctors. Nothing worked. It’s a disease.”

Her fingers ran down the glass again, but
silently.

“Even with all his problems,” she said
softly, “he was good to me—he cares about me.
That’s
what scares me. He
must be in trouble. It would have to be something serious for him not to be
here.”

“He’s been telling everyone it was
business.”

She gave a miserable look. Covered her
face. Exposed it. “Yes, he sold. Once in a while. Only to get his own stash. I
know it’s wrong, and I’m sure in some part of his brain he does too. But he
felt he had no choice. He was broke, and
he
wouldn’t give him more than
pennies. I tried to help him, but most of the time he wouldn’t take anything
from me—not unless he was hurting really bad. He’s the one who suffers... the
way he lives—a hole over a hairdresser’s.”

She looked out at the landscaped yard.

“It’s not like he sold to little kids or
anything like that. Just to junkies, and they’d have to get it one way or the
other.... It’s the heroin. All this talk about crack, and heroin goes on eating
people up.”

She began to cry.

I patted her shoulder.

“So many times I offered to have him come
live with me. To try another program. He said he was beyond hope and didn’t
want to drag me down. Didn’t
want
treatment—he
liked
junk, it was
his lover, he’d never give it up. But still he was always there for me. If I
called him to talk about something, he’d always listen. Even if he was stoned,
he’d try. Sitting there, pretending to be normal—he’d be here now if he wasn’t
in some kind of major trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

She squeezed her hands together. “The
people he hung out with.”

“Who are they?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t know. He made a
point about shielding me. Whenever I came over, he rushed around, cleaning up,
putting his kit away. Lately, he didn’t even want me over at his place—too
depressing, he said. So we had coffee in restaurants. He’d come in looking half
dead, trying so hard to act okay. I know he sounds like just another stupid
junkie, but he really is a wonderful brother.”

I nodded, thinking of Puck’s dinner date
with Ken, how an addict might have viewed the sudden appearance of a wealthy
half brother. Yet he hadn’t shown up.

“Milo’s not going to call the police in
Taos or anything like that, is he? I don’t want to put him in any more danger.”

“No,” I said. “Milo’s main concern is
you.”

“Yes, I can’t believe all he’s done. You,
too. And now Ken.”

She wiped her eyes.

“I must bring it out in people, like a
wounded bird. Puck told me that, once. That he’d always seen me as wounded. I
didn’t like that. I wanted him to perceive me as strong.”

“You are strong.”

She spread her fingers on the glass.
Looked through the tabletop, studying the pattern of the bricks. “Milo told me,
you know. About being gay. It shocked me.... Now I understand the position you
were in. I really put you in the middle. I’m sorry.”

“It was one of those things that couldn’t
be helped.”

She shook her head. “I’d never have
suspected it. A big, burly guy like that—that’s stupid, of course, but still,
it was the
last
thing I’d have guessed. It must be so hard for him. The
job.”

“How did finding out affect you?”

“What do you mean?”

“How do you feel about his being gay?”

“How do I
feel
about it? Well...
I’m certainly glad I know the truth now.”

She looked away.

“Anything else?” I said.

“I guess—on a selfish level—I guess I’m
disappointed.”

She shook her head.

“Maybe it was just a stupid crush, but it
sure—I mean, the feelings are still there. How can you kill feelings, right?”

I nodded.

She stood and walked up and down the
patio.

“He and I both do this,” she said. “Pace
when we’re nervous. We found out when we were at the hotel. All of a sudden, we
started doing it simultaneously; it was a riot.”

She looked at me. “You know how I feel?
Cheated. But I’ll get over it. And I’m still grateful to have him as a friend.
Don’t worry about me, I may look wounded but it’s an illusion. All done with
mirrors.” Smile.