J is for JUDGMENT Page 24

“Well. I see your point, and I’m sorry about all this. We didn’t make the contact to cause you pain.”

  “Why did you, then?”

  “We were hoping to connect. We thought enough time had passed to heal old wounds.”

  “Those ‘old wounds’ are news to me. I just heard about this shit yesterday.”

  “I can appreciate that, and you’re entitled to feel what you feel. It’s just that Grand’s not going to live forever. She’s eighty-seven now, and she’s not in the best of health. You still have a chance to enjoy the relationship.”

  “Correction. She has a chance to enjoy the relationship. I’m not sure I would.”

  “Will you think about it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you mind if I tell her we’ve spoken?”

  “I don’t see how I can prevent it.”

  There was a fractional silence. “Are you really this unforgiving?”

  “Absolutely. Why not? Just like Grand,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate the attribute.”

  “I see,” she said coolly. “Look, this is not your fault, and I don’t mean to take it out on you. You’re just going to have to give me some time here. I’ve made my peace with the fact that I’m alone. I like my life as it is, and I’m not at all sure I want to change.”

  “We’re not asking you to change.”

  “Then you better get used to me the way I am,” I said.

  She had the good grace to laugh, which in an odd way helped. Our good-byes were slightly warmer. I said all the right things, and by the time I hung up my churlishness was already fading to some extent. Content so often follows form. It’s not just that we’re nice to the people we like… we like the people we’re nice to. It works both ways. I guess that’s what good manners are about, or so my aunt always claimed. In the meantime, I knew I wouldn’t be driving up to Lompoc any time soon. To hell with that.

  I went across the hall to the restroom, and when I got back the phone was ringing. I made a lunge and snatched up the receiver from the far side of the desk, easing my way around until I reached my swivel chair. When I identified myself, I could hear breathing on the line and for one split second I thought it was Wendell.

  “Take your time,” I said. I closed my eyes and crossed my fingers, thinking, Please, please, please. “This is Brian Jaffe.”

  “Ah. I thought it might be your father. Have you heard from him?”

  “Nuhn-uhn. That’s why I called. Have you?”

  “Not since last night.”

  “Michael says the car Dad came to his place in is still parked at the curb.”

  “He was having car trouble, which is why I gave him a lift. When did you last see him?”

  “Day before yesterday. He came by in the afternoon and we talked. He said he’d be back last night, but he never showed.”

  “He may have tried,” I said. “Someone took some shots at us and he disappeared. This morning we found out the Lord was gone.”

  “The boat?”

  “Right. That’s the one your father was on when vanished.”

  “Dad stole a boat?”

  “Well, it looks that way, but nobody really knows at this point. Maybe that’s the only way he could think of to get out. He must have felt he was in real jeopardy.”

  “Hey, yeah, getting shot at,” Brian said facetiously, I fleshed out the story for him, hoping to ingratiate myself. I nearly mentioned Renata, but I bit the words off in time. If Michael hadn’t known about her, chances were that Brian didn’t, either. As usual, given my per. verse nature, I was feeling protective of the “villain” of the piece. Maybe Wendell would have a change of heart and return the boat. Maybe he’d talk Brian into “coming in,” and the two would turn themselves over to those spun-sugar eggs with a hole you could peek in, revealing a world much better than this.

  Brian breathed in my ear some more. I waited him out. “Michael says Dad has a girlfriend. Is that true?” be said.

  “Ah, mmm. I don’t know what to say about that. He was traveling with a friend, but I really don’t know what their relationship consists of.”

  “Right.” He snorted with disbelief. I’d forgotten he was eighteen years old and probably knew more about sex than I did. He certainly knew more about violence. What made me think I could fool a kid like him?

  “You want Renata’s number? She may have heard from him.”

  “I got a number to call and this machine picks up. If Dad’s around, he calls back. Is this the one you have?” He recited Renata’s unlisted number.

  “That’s it. Look, why don’t you give me your current location. I’ll pop over there and we can talk. Maybe between us we can figure out where he is.”

  He thought about that. “He told me to wait. He said don’t talk to anyone until he gets here. He’s probably on his way.” He said this without conviction in a tone oozed with uneasiness.

  ‘That’s always possible,” I said. “What’s the plan?” Ute I really thought Brian would spill the beans to me.

  “I have to go.”

  “Wait! Brian?”

  The phone clicked down in my ear.

  “Goddamn it!” I sat and stared at the receiver, willing it to ring. “Come on, come on.”

  I knew perfectly well the kid wasn’t going to call again. I became aware of the tension rippling through my shoulders. I got up and moved around the desk, finding a bare expanse of carpeting where I could stretch out on my back. The ceiling was singularly ‘uninformative. I hate waiting for things to happen, and I don’t like being at the mercy of circumstance. Maybe I could figure out where Brian was being hidden. Wendell didn’t have much in the way of personal resources. He had very few friends and no confederates that I knew of. He was also being very secretive, apparently not even trusting Renata with the information about Brian. The Fugitive might have been a great place for him to hole up, but she and Brian would both have to be extraordinarily talented liars to pull that one off. From what I could tell, he’d seemed genuinely ignorant of her existence, and she seemed uninterested in his. I suspected if Renata had known where Brian was, she’d have blown the whistle on him. She was certainly angry enough at Wendell’s desertion.

  Wendell almost had to have Brian tucked away in. motel or hotel someplace. If he was able to pop in to see Brian on a near daily basis, the place probably wasn’t that far away. If Brian was left on his own for long periods, he’d have to have access to food without exposing himself to public scrutiny. Maybe a motel room with a kitchen so he could cook for himself. Big? Small? There were maybe fifteen to twenty motels in the vicinity. Was I going to have to drive down there and canvass every single one? That was an unappealing possibility. Canvassing is the equivalent of cold calls in the sales field. Once in a while you might hit pay dirt, but the process is tedious. Then again, Brian was really my only access to Wendell. So far, the Dispatch didn’t seem to be picking up on Brian’s jail release, but once pictures of the two appeared in the papers, the situation was going to heat up. Brian might have pocket money, but he probably didn’t have unlimited funds. If Wendell was determined to rescue his kid, he had better be quick about it, and I had, too.

  I checked my watch. It was now 6:15. I hauled myself off the floor and made sure my answering machine was in message mode. I pulled out the newspaper clippings that detailed the original escape. The mug shot of Brian Jaffe wasn’t flattering, but it would serve my purposes. I grabbed my portable Smith-Corona typewriter and my handbag and headed for the door. I clattered down the stairs, typewriter bumping against my leg, and then trotted two blocks to the spot where my car was parked. I decided at the last minute to take a quick detour along the beach. By taking the long way around to a freeway entrance, I’d end up passing the marina, where I could check up on Carl Eckert. It was entirely possible that he’d returned from out of town and nobody’d bothered to let me know. I was also thinking about the little harborside snack shack where I could pick up some killer burritos to munch on in the car. Kinsey Mi
llhone dining al fresco again.

  All the slots in the small no-pay parking lot were full, so I was forced to take a ticket and actually drive through to the pay lot. I locked my car, glancing to my left as I passed the kiosk. Carl Eckert was sitting in his car, a little red sports job of some exotic sort. He looked like a man in shock, pasty-faced and sweating, his pupils dilated. He surveyed his surroundings with an air of confusion. He was wearing a snappy dark blue business suit, but his tie had been loosened and his collar button opened. His silvery hair was unkempt, as if he’d been running his hands through it.

  I slowed my pace, watching. He couldn’t seem to decide what to do. I saw him reach for his car keys as if to turn the ignition. He pulled his hand back, reached into his pants pocket, and took out a handkerchief, which he used to mop at his face and neck. He shoved the handkerchief in his suit coat, then took out a pack of cigarettes and shook one into view. He pushed in his car lighter.

  I crossed to his car, hunkering down on the driver’s side so that my gaze would be level with his. “Carl? Kinsey Millhone.” He turned and stared at me without comprehension. “We met at the yacht club the other night. I was looking for Wendell Jaffe.”

  “The private investigator,” he said finally.

  “That’s right.”

  “Sorry it took me so long, but I’ve had some bad news.”

  “I heard about the Lord. Can I do anything?”

  The lighter popped out. He lit his cigarette with, hands that shook so badly he could barely make the lighter meet the tip. He sucked in smoke, choking on it in his desperation for a hit of nicotine. “Son of a bitch stole my boat,” he said, coughing violently. He started to say something more, but then he stopped himself and looked off across the parking lot. I’d caught the glint of tears, but I couldn’t tell if they were from the smoke or the loss of his boat.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I live on that boat. Everything I have is tied up in the Lord. It’s my life. He had to have known that. He’d be a fool not to know. He loved the boat as much as I did.” He shook his head in disbelief.

  “That’s a rough one,” I said. “How’d you hear about it?”

  “Renata showed up at my office after lunch,” I said. “She said he’d cleared out of her place and she was worried he’d try to make a run for it. Her boat was at die dock, so I guess she thought of yours.”

  “How’d he get in? That’s what I can’t figure out. I had all the locks changed the minute I bought that boat.”

  “Maybe he broke in. Or he might have picked the lock,” I said. “At any rate, by the time we got here, it was gone.”

  He stared at me. “Is that the woman? Renata? What’s her last name?”

  “Why?”

  “I’d like to talk to her. She might know more than she’s saying.”

  “Yeah, she might,” I said. I was thinking about the shooting the night before, wondering if Carl could account for his whereabouts. “When did you get back? I heard you were out of town last night, but no one seemed to know where you were.”

  “Wouldn’t have done much good. I was hard to reach. I had a bunch of meetings up in SLO-town in the afternoon. I was at the Best Western overnight, checked out before eight this morning, and threw my bag in the trunk. I sat in another bunch of meetings today and started home around five.”

  “It must have been a shock.”

  “Jesus, I’ll say. I can’t believe it’s gone.”

  SLO-town was the shorthand for San Luis Obispo, a small college town ninety miles north of us. It sounds like he’d been small college town ninety miles north of us. It sounds like he’d been completely tied up for the last two day or had his alibi all rehearsed. “What will you do now? Do you have a place to stay?”

  “I’ll try one of those places unless the tourists beat me to it,” he said with a nod toward the motels that lined Cabana Boulevard. “What about you? I take you never caught up with him.”

  “Actually, I ran into him at Michael’s last night. I was hoping we could talk, but something else came up. We were separated inadvertently, and that’s the last saw of him. I heard he was supposed to meet you, as matter of fact.”

  “I had to cancel at the last minute when this other business came up.”

  “You never saw him at all?”

  “We only chatted by phone.”

  “What’d he want? Did he say?”

  “No. Not a word.”

  “He told me you had something that belonged him.”

  “He said that? Well, that’s odd. I wonder what I meant.” He gave his watch a glance. “Oh, shit. It’s getting late. I better get a move on before all the rooms get snapped up.”

  I stepped away from the car. “I’ll let you go, then I said. “If you hear anything about the Lord, will you let me know?”

  “Sure thing.”

  The car started with a rumble. He backed out of d slot and pulled up beside the kiosk with his ticket extended to the woman in the booth. I went on about my business, moving toward the snack shack with a quick backward glance. He’d adjusted his rearview mirror to keep an eye on me. The last thing I saw of him was his vanity license plate, which read SAILSMN. That was cute. I thought he’d probably done a little sales job on me. He was lying about something. I just wasn’t sure what it was.

  Chapter 22

  *

  By the time I reached the beachside neighborhood on the periphery of Perdido where all the motels are situated, the ocean was tinted by an eerie gray-green haze. As I watched, an odd refraction of fading sunlight created the fleeting mirage of an island hovering above the sea, mossy and unreachable. There was something otherworldly in its gloom. I’ve seen something like it in the endless passageway created when two mirrors reflect one another, shadowy rooms curving back out of sight. The moment passed, and the image turned to smoke. The air was hot and still, unusually humid for the California coast. The area residents would have to search their garages tonight, looking for last summer’s electric floor fans, wide blades sueded with dust. Sleep would be a restless confection of sweat and tangled sheets without hope of refreshment.

  I parked on a side street just off the main thorough-fare. All the motel lights had come on, creating an artificial daylight: neon greens and blues blinking out competing invitations to passing travelers. There were countless people milling along the sidewalks, all in shorts and tank tops, looking for relief from the heat. The Frostee Freeze would probably set a sales record. Cars cruised in an endless search for parking spaces. There wasn’t actually any sand in the streets, but there was the feeling of blown sand, something scrubby and windswept, a scent in the air of salt corrosion and fishing nets. The few funky bars were crowded with college students, bass-heavy music pulsing through the open doorways.

  One thing I needed to keep in mind: Brian Jaffe grew up in this town. His picture had been splashed across the local papers, and he probably wasn’t free to spend a lot of time on the streets – too much risk of being recognized. I added free cable TV to my mental list of motel attributes. I didn’t think Brian’s father would dare leave him in a dive. The bleaker the accommodations, the more likely the kid was to seek amusement elsewhere.

  I started with motels on the main drag and worked my way out into the surrounding neighborhood. I don’t know how motel builders get their training, but they all seem to take the same motel-naming class. Every seaside community seems to sport the same assortment. I went in and out of the Tides, the Sun ‘N’ Surf, the Breakwater, the Reef, the Lagoon, the Schooner, the Beachside, the Blue Sands, the White Sands, the Sandpiper, and the Casa Del Mar. I flashed the photostat of my PI license. I flashed the grainy black-and-white newspaper photograph of Brian Jaffe. I couldn’t believe he’d be registered under his own name, so I tried variations: Brian Jefferson, Jeff O’Brian, Brian Huff, Dean Huff, and Wendell’s favorite, Stanley Lord. I knew the date Brian had been erroneously released from jail, and I reasoned that he’d checked into a motel the same day. H
e was a single, and his bill was probably paid in advance. My guess was he kept to himself and hadn’t done a lot of coming and going. I was hoping someone could identify him from the picture and my description. Motel managers and desk clerks shook their heads in ignorance. I left a business card with each, extracting weighty promises that they’d get in touch if someone resembling Brian Jaffe checked into their establishments. Oh, sure. Absolutely. I wasn’t all the way out the door when they dropped the cards in their respective trash baskets.

  At the Lighthouse-Direct Dial Phones*Color Cable TV*Weekly & Monthly Rates*Heated Pool*Complimentary Morning Coffee – on the twelfth try, I got a nod instead of a negative. The Lighthouse was a three-story oblong of boxy cinder block with a pool in the center. The exterior was painted sky blue and had a thirty-foot stylized image of a lighthouse affixed to the front. The desk clerk was in his seventies, energetic and alert. He was as bald as a doorknob, but he seemed to have all his own teeth. He tapped the clipping with an index finger crooked with arthritis.

  “Oh, yes, he’s here. Michael Brendan. Room one ten. I wondered why he looked familiar. An older gentleman signed the register and paid a week in advance. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure of the relationship.”

  “Father and son.”

  “That was their claim,” the clerk said, still dubious. He scanned the details of the escape and the subsequent killing of the female motorist whose car was stolen. “I remember reading about this. Looks like that young fellow got himself in a peck of trouble and he’s not out yet. You want me to call the police?”

  “Make that the county sheriff’s department and give me ten minutes with him first. Ask them to use restraint. I don’t want this turned into some kind of bloodbath. The kid is eighteen. It’s not going to look load if he’s gunned down in his pajamas.”

  I left the lobby and moved through a passageway to the courtyard. It was fully dark by then, and the lighted swimming pool glowed aquamarine. Reflections from the water shimmered against the building, blots of light in a constantly shifting pattern of white. Brian’s room was on the first floor, with sliding glass doors that opened onto a small patio, which in turn opened onto the pool. Patios were separated from each other by low-growing shrubbery. Each was numbered, so finding his wasn’t difficult. I caught sight of him through mesh drapes only partially drawn. The sliding doors were closed, and I had to guess the air-conditioning was cranked up to high.