California Girl (14 page)

“This is Andy.”

“Peace, Andy,” she said. “Hey, Jess, I got some knockout
sinsemilla
from Ronnie Joe.”

“Roll one up.”

“Already did. And Dr. T. said there’s a thousand hits of Orange Sunshine on their way to Laguna.”

“You might not want to talk about that right now,” said Jesse. A mildly amused glance at Andy. “This guy here, he’ll put it in the paper. Or worse.”

Gail lit the joint and offered it to Andy.

“No thanks. See you at the funeral, Jesse.”

“Later, bro.”

JANELLE VONN’S
casket was a deeply burnished Honduran mahogany with gold hardware. It was draped with one large arrangement of white roses. The coffin stand legs were solid with more white roses, as were the cross behind the pulpit, the altar, and the railing. Andy smelled the flowers the moment he walked inside the Grove Drive-In Church of God.

David eulogized Janelle to an overcapacity crowd. Even the folding chairs weren’t enough. His words were brief and powerful.

Andy listened to his brother. Heard the radiant strength in David’s voice. What a gift. Wondered if David had made it over to Janelle’s for dinner with her and Howard. Not what David would want widely known. But it would be an interesting moment when he asked David that question. If he’d had dinner with Janelle that night, then David would certainly have told Nick already. It was probably old news. Would be nice to have been cc’d on that one, Andy thought. Not that he could do anything with it.

But Nick’s mind would surely blow when he learned what Andy had learned. Mystery lover. Pregnant. Unless that was old news, too. The autopsy would reveal some of it.

Jesse Black performed “Girl of the North Country” and “Imagine
You.” The music was dreamy and pure and you could hear the crowd breathing. Then sniffing back tears. The audience wasn’t sure whether to clap, but when the applause began it mounted quickly and ran long. Black nodded once and walked out a front exit with wholesome Gail and orange-haired Crystal trailing behind him.

Andy sat with Teresa on his left and Nick on his right. As he looked around, what struck him most and hardest was how few of these people had even met her. She was a celebrity in death that she’d never been in life. An event. A symbol. An entertainment.

Journal
stand sales had gone up 162 percent over the five days following her death, peaking with the Wolfman profile on Saturday. Subscriptions up, too. The
Journal
had capitalized. Janelle Vonn and related stories had run above the fold, right up there with Johnson and the war and the Russians and the space program. Display advertising orders had increased 26 percent, most of them for first-section placement, where the Janelle stories ran. The
Times
and the
Register
numbers were up, too, but not like the
Journal
’s.

So, they had given the people what they wanted. They’d kicked ass. Andy had kicked most of it himself. And here they were, all those people, asses kicked and showing up at a funeral for someone they never knew. Because of his words on a page. And a picture of a schizophrenic with a hairy hand.

But if he hadn’t served up Janelle piping hot and fresh for them each day, someone else would have. Andy shook his head and looked down at his church shoes.

When it was over they joined the throng moving outside to their cars for the short drive to Angel’s Lawn and the grave.

Andy watched in numb silence as they lowered Janelle’s coffin into the hole. Only later, while he stood alone by Clay’s grave under a leafless sycamore, did the tears come heavy and hot.

THE BECKER
family home stood pale against the trees in the cool October night. Andy parked next to David’s blue Kingswood Estate station
wagon. Behind Roger and Marie Stoltz’s new white Cadillac. Nick wouldn’t be there, which was fine with Andy.

It wasn’t until after dinner that he got David alone in the study, closed the door. David was pale. He plopped into Max’s big leather club chair. When David’s strength left him it was like a house of cards collapsing. Andy poured a couple of ample scotches from Max’s library bar, skipped the ice and water.

David mostly nodded his confirmation of Jesse Black’s story. Yes, Janelle had a secret man. No, David had no idea who he was or what they did. Yes, she was pregnant and planning to abort. No, Janelle really didn’t know who the father was.

Of course he’d told Nick all of this.

“Did you see her that last night?” asked Andy.

David sipped the drink. Looked at Andy with a level expression. “We were going to have dinner,” he said. “But Janelle changed her mind on Monday. Canceled.”

“Nick know about this?”

“If Jesse told you, he must have told Nick. I haven’t.”

“Why?”

David looked down, scuffed the old wool rug with the toe of his wing tip. Drank again. “I don’t want it known, unless it would help in some way. I don’t think it would put me in a good light.”

“Why?”

“Think hard, Andrew.”

“Proximity.”

“That’s all it takes. In my…calling.”

“Was Barbara invited to the dinner, too?”

“Of course she was. See, Andy, that’s what I mean. All I’m going to get from that broken dinner date is suspicion and innuendo. I don’t need it.”

“Who’s Howard?”

“Langton. Janelle’s friend. She lived with his family after they busted her brothers and you wrote that article. And yes, just so you know, Howard’s wife, Linda, was also on the invite list. In fact, the four of us had had dinner two or three times with Janelle and a date.”

“Why’d she cancel?”

“She didn’t give a reason.” David leaned back. Closed his eyes. Twirled his drink glass, then set it on his thigh.

“What did she do for money?” asked Andy.

A faint shake of his head. “I don’t know, Andy. Am I supposed to know everything you need for an article? Come on.”

“Amazing,” said Andy.

“What?”

“That you could be her minister for so long and know so little about her. That I could write probably ten articles about her over the years and know so little about her. That Jesse Black could hang with her for almost a year and know so little about her.”

“She only gave what was asked for.”

“Why?”

“Because so much had been taken.”

“And there wasn’t much left?”

“I think there was a great deal left. A great deal. She just hadn’t learned yet that the more you give away the more you have.”

David pulled himself upright and walked out of the room. Andy poured another scotch. Could hear David saying his goodbyes.

HIS PARENTS
and the Stoltzes were in the darkened living room watching the late news. Andy sat on the sofa between Max and Monika. Noted that Roger and Marie Stoltz got the good recliners closer to the TV. His father’s blue and his mother’s white. And it wasn’t just because Stoltz was a United States representative now. Andy remembered that Thanksgiving so long ago, the first night he’d made love with Meredith. The Stoltzes sat right where they are now, he thought, holding court.

The day’s American casualties in Vietnam were a reported twenty-two dead. Total for September was five hundred and thirty-nine. For the “conflict” it was eighteen thousand four hundred and eight. Enemy dead today was twenty-six. President Johnson said American resolve
would not waver and would never break. Two newscasters discussed the logic of destroying a village in order to save it. Then a commercial for new Oreos with creamier filling.

“Eighteen
thousand
four hundred and eight,” said Max. “
Americans
. Roger, you mean to tell me that a strategic nuclear bomb on Hanoi wouldn’t end this war slick as a whistle?”

“Moscow would strike back.”

“Then bomb Moscow, too! It’s Kalashnikovs that are killing our boys.”

“We all know that,” said Stoltz. “And rhetorically that’s an interesting stance. Practically, it will never happen.”

“You’re right,” said Max. “I thought Dick Nixon would run on that plank if anyone would. But no. He doesn’t have the balls for it.”

“He’s got to get into office first,” said Stoltz. “Look what happened to Goldwater.”

“Dick will win it this time,” said Marie.

“Roger,” said Monika. “I’m just glad you’re our man in Washington now. Keep up the good fight.” She smiled. Big and beautiful. And a rarity, thought Andy.

Stoltz smiled, too. “Business has never been better since Max and Marie started running it.”

Andy felt his anger rise at Stoltz. Automatic. Always had been. But it wasn’t for anything he could ever put a finger on. Maybe his voice, his easy sincerity. His casually handsome face, the dumb/dashing aviator’s mustache. Maybe something to do with the way Stoltz got Clay into the language institute, then the CIA, then killed. Or how he got David into Anaheim First Presbyterian right out of San Anselmo’s, when there were so many extra ministers waiting. Or arranged the congratulations letter from Nixon when Nick graduated from the Sheriff’s Academy. Or put Andy’s disillusioned and heartbroken father to work at his goddamned chemical plant while
the representative
spent half his time swilling at the public trough in D.C.

And made his mother smile.

It annoyed Andy that Stoltz had infiltrated his family. Just like Stoltz brayed about the Commies infiltrating his government. The International Stoltz Conspiracy.

“I heard you got some more contracts for Orange Sunshine,” said Andy.

“That’s right,” said Stoltz. “Last month your father and Marie nailed down San Bernardino County. Thousands of miles of asphalt to clean. And they’re paving thousands more.”

“That’ll take a lot of rotten oranges.”

“More of those to come, too.”

“I liked it better when Orange County had orange trees instead of bulldozed groves,” said Andy. “When people like Max Becker had good work. When my mom used to smile.”

“Enough, Andy,” she said.

Stoltz nodded. “He’s right. I hate to see the groves go, too, Andy. But people need somewhere to live. And the Florida oranges are just as good for juice. At least we’re using the last of the fruit.”

“America will fall like overripe fruit into our hands,”
said Max.

“You watch, you’ll see,” said Stoltz.

“Satan’s hands,” said Monika.

“Every Soviet prediction since nineteen-seventeen has come true,” said Marie.

Andy stood, kissed his rigid mother, and ran a hand over his father’s shoulder. Nodded to Marie. Shook Stoltz’s hand, saw the scratches and a scab just below the thumb when he let go.

“You people are all crazy,” Andy said, and walked out.

DAVID TOOK TWO DAYS
off from work. Then another. He’d never felt so drained. He couldn’t face another sermon or funeral or wedding or baptism. Not one more witticism for the marquee. Not another inmate who didn’t do it. Not one human being except for his immediate family.

Barbara rewrote the sermon preempted by Janelle. She was an excellent writer, adept at both hermeneutics and homiletics. David invited her to deliver the message on Sunday but Barbara refused. He took a marquee adage from a magazine rather than compose one:
Exercise Daily—Walk with the Lord.
Deacon Shaffner put it up and took the old one down.

His doctor did an electrocardiograph. Normal. Took blood for lab work, put a hurry-up on it, and got results in a day. Normal. Did a thoracic X ray to be safe. Normal again.

The doctor said he was in perfect health, that God was taking care of David as well as David was taking care of God.

He took long walks on the beach in Newport with Barbara, Matthew, Rachel, and Wendy. Matthew was two now. Rachel almost one. Wendy was five. She was a Vietnamese girl David had arranged to be placed in an adoptive family that was part of his congregation. He
had prayed long and hard for the well-being of the frail, frightened girl. One week later the entire family had been killed in a car accident caused by a speeding drunk driver. All of them except for Wendy, who at three years old was hurled cleanly from the open side window of the station wagon and caught in the blossom-heavy branches of a navel orange tree that grew beside the boulevard. Bruises, nicks, and a mild concussion. That was all.

David and Barbara brought her home from St. Joseph Hospital, never a doubt that she belonged with them. And they were back in exactly one month for Barbara to give birth to Matthew.

Now, two years later, all three children were blessings to them. Rachel was peaceful and observant like her father. Matthew was mobile and fearless like his mother. Wendy was often delighted and took a helpful role with the younger ones. She had a large and selfless smile.

On the morning of his third day away from work, David was changing Matthew’s diaper when Barbara put her head in the room.

“
Whew!
Special Agent Hambly? FBI?”

“Oh? On a Saturday.”

“Guess I’ll finish this.”

They sat in the study of David’s home, door closed, afternoon sun blunted by the shutters. Hambly was David’s age, early thirties, with a compact face and body. Blue eyes, short dark hair, a deep dimple in the middle of his chin. His suit and shoes were brown. He moved the ottoman aside and lay his briefcase flat on it.

“I attended the memorial service,” said Hambly.

“Almost all the way back, on the left.”

“You were close, you and Janelle?”

“Yes.”

“It seemed like you’d known her a long time.”

“Fourteen years.”

“She liked LSD, didn’t she?”

“I believe she tried it.”

“Tried it. Yeah. Liked Leary’s Orange Sunshine, didn’t she?”

“I’m not familiar with the different brands.”

“Brands,” said Hambly.

David sensed that Hambly was not interested in his own line of questioning.

“It’s unusual for the FBI to investigate a murder,” said David.

“We’re not. Did Janelle ever talk to you about political organizations?”

“Never. She had no interest in politics that I know of. Except she was against the war.”

“I’d call that politics.”

“As I just did, Mr. Hambly.”

David still had the unbalancing feeling that Hambly wasn’t asking questions he cared about. Until the next one, which Hambly delivered after moving to the edge of the sofa.

“What about the John Birch Society?”

“Janelle Vonn?”

Hambly said nothing. But he looked at David with a pugnacious blankness.

“Actually,” said David, “she did mention the John Birch Society a few times. She asked me about them. What I knew. If they were legal. If they were good.”

“Legal?”

“She wasn’t sure at first if they were a legitimate group,” said David, “or perhaps an outlawed one.”

“What do you mean by
at first
?”

“When she first mentioned them.”

“Which was?” asked Hambly.

“Four, five years ago.”

“Did she know any members?”

“My father and mother are Birchers. Not that she knew them very well.”

“Give me the names of four of her friends,” said Hambly.

David nodded but didn’t speak. He regarded the dimple and blue eyes of Special Agent Hambly. Saw that the dimple was too deep for a razor to safely negotiate. Little sprout of black whiskers dead center in the man’s chin.

“No,” said David.

“Why not?”

“I don’t like your attitude or your manners,” said David.

“Are you a friend of Roger Stoltz?”

“Yes.”

“Howard Langton?”

“Yes.”

“Good friends with them, Reverend Becker?”

“Not close.”

“Close enough to have dinner with Langton and Janelle the night she died?”

David’s heart fluttered. “That dinner date was canceled.”

Hambly squared the briefcase on the ottoman. The two latches burst upward with loud clicks and flashes of gold. Hambly slipped out a single 8
¹
/
²
-by-11 black-and-white photograph. Pinching it with his forefinger and thumb, he held it up for David to see.

David remembered walking up to Janelle’s door that evening. As in the picture.

Hambly held up another. David remembered sitting at the dinette in Janelle’s cheerful little cottage with her and Howard Langton. All laughing. As in the picture. Who could possibly have taken these?

“There are more.”

“Why did you take them?”

“In conjunction with routine surveillance. And they turned out to be, well…useful.”

“What exactly is this about?” asked David. “What exactly do you want?”

“First let me tell you what I don’t want. I don’t want to have to show these pictures to anybody. I really mean that.”

“And only I can prevent it.”

“Of course you can. Just tell me some stories.”

“About who?”

“Start with your father and Roger Stoltz. Tell me about their political activities and plans. Their personal opinions and relationships. Their
faults and foibles. We know they’re Birchers. We can handle the Birchers. And we know about the Klan. We can handle them, too. But we’re hearing about this new thing down south, the National Volunteer Police. And we’re hearing about it right here in Orange County. We’re seeing ‘Support Your Local Police’ bumper stickers given out at Max’s meetings. We wonder if there might be a kind of bridge. A JBS bridge leading back to the Klan. Nobody heard Birchers crying when King got shot. President Johnson, being a Texan, is very concerned about white hate.”

“Sweet Jesus in heaven.”

“But our concerns don’t stop with Mr. Stoltz and Mr. Becker. We’re interested in everyone you know, Reverend. Nick is a terrific detective. You two must talk. And Andy’s ingratiated himself with the Dessingers. I wonder at all he knows about this county. And look at your large and growing congregation. We’d love to know what certain of your believers are really doing and thinking. For instance the Robinsons, who are former members of the Socialist Workers Party. Or Dyson Krenek, who has a very
personal
relationship with a United States senator whose name I can’t reveal. And there is the Martinez family, with blood ties to César Chávez. And poor Gina Ritter, with her husband a Democratic Party leader plugged into Hollywood and her son plugged into a heroin needle. Even the inmates you counsel at the jail, they must have some interesting stories to tell.”

“You’re a pestilence.”

“Or Bob Washburn—Dr. Robert Washburn—who teaches history and espouses Marxism out at the University of California at Irvine. How many students has he signed into membership in the American Communist Party?”

“None, that I know of.”

“But wouldn’t it be good to really know for sure?”

David felt as if he’d been slugged in the stomach. He stood, took a deep breath, sat back down.

“And who really runs the RoMar Orange Sunshine plant?” asked the agent. “Is it Max Becker or Marie Stoltz?”

“How would I know? Who cares?”

“
We
care. We are exactly who cares. Odd, isn’t it? Orange Sunshine. Same name for LSD and for Stoltz’s asphalt cleaner?”

David looked at Hambly but could hardly form thoughts, let alone answers.

“Reverend,” said Hambly, “I’d be happy with information on just about anybody in your congregation. You have a lot of friends. I just want you to share once in a while. That’s all. We don’t have to meet. You never have to see me again. You just call me at a number I’ll give you before I leave, and you say it’s Judas. You just say, hello, Hambly, this is Judas. I thought of that code name just for you.”

“You are repugnant to me in every way possible,” said David.

“Back at you, Rev. I take it we have a deal. You want these?”

“Leave them on the sofa.”

“Tell me about your father and Stoltz,” said Hambly.

“Tell you what?”

“When they met. How they met. Are they faithful to their wives? What do they talk about at those long dinners? Are they really behind Nixon or isn’t he tough enough on Communism for them? What do they really think of him? And Pat? What do they think of her? Mainly, what in hell’s this National Volunteer Police? We don’t think it’s anything like a traditional volunteer service, where you get to dress up in a cute uniform and help out the local cops.”

“I can’t do this right here, right now.”

“I understand, David. I really do. Here. Call me when you’re ready to talk.”

He handed David an FBI card with a handwritten number on the back.

“Stoltz and Marie happy?”

“I really don’t know,” said David.

“You’ve been their family minister for almost three years now. I use the word ‘family’ loosely, since they don’t have children.”

“We don’t have those kinds of discussions.”

“Maybe you should.”

Hambly set the photographs on the sofa. Swung down the briefcase lid and snapped it shut.

“Well?” he asked. “Anything else?”

“No.”

They stood and Hambly offered his hand.

“Get out of my house,” said David.

“Have a far-out and groovy afternoon, Rev.”

WHEN HAMBLY
had gone David called the FBI number on the card. A businesslike male voice answered, “Good afternoon, Federal Bureau of Investigation,” so he hung up.

He slid to his knees and rested his forehead on the beige carpet. Arms around his middle. Prayed as hard as he’d ever prayed that news of his dinner with Janelle Vonn and what had happened after would never come out. Not to mention pictures.

My God, my God, my God.

His stomach ached and his heart ached and his head ached. He remembered something from an old San Anselmo’s class called “The Art of Prayer,” where Dr. Rable showed them how during a prayer a rhetorical pause can be escalated to a potent dramatic caesura. You had to do it at the right time and have the courage to allow your listeners—or yourself—to go “from restless to receptive.” So he just knelt there, head on the carpet and body revolting with worry, praying with silence. Not a word. Not a thought.

Waiting for an answer.

Waiting for a sign.

Waiting for a miracle.

Waiting.

David had tried this prayer of silence before. But as soon as the silence became ripe, Satan always came barreling into it, demanding to know if God really intervened in the affairs of men in the first place. Where was the proof? And if He didn’t, then why spend a lifetime asking Him to? And Satan would remind David that God had not yet
con
clusively
answered a single prayer of his. Not one that David could separate from mere coincidence. Not one that David could prove was an act of God. Satan said he knew plenty of ministers who were actually spoken to by God. It happened all the time. Maybe, said Lucifer, David was in the wrong calling.

So David held the silence as long as he could. Invited God into it. But it was the harpy voice of the devil that screeched into his mind in a whirlwind of dust and skidding boots like something from a cartoon. Less than a minute of peace was all David got.

And no answer.

A while later David dialed Nick but hung up again, realizing he couldn’t explain his situation without being revealed as a huge liar. And worse. The worship program he’d stupidly left at Janelle’s was now the least of David’s worries.

He thought of calling Andy and wondered what he’d say.

Ditto Mom and Dad.

Finally called Howard Langton and told him what had happened, to expect Hambly to come his way.

Langton, a high school civics teacher and football coach, was his usual bullish self, saying the bureau could kiss his ass before he’d rat on his friends. Though he had no desire to have it known that he’d dined without his wife at the home of a former student on the night of her murder.

BY FIVE
that afternoon David finally had to get out of the house. He drove to Angel’s Lawn and stood next to Clay’s grave. He tried to do this once a week. Tried to pray for Clay’s soul but couldn’t concentrate.

So he drove the freeways. Got some motion. Steered and tried to pray and watched the exit signs blip past. Made him feel like he was progressing. Moving through time and space in a certain and purposeful way.

Then to Max and Monika’s like he often did. Just to see them and share a few words. He loved them. And pitied them, too, because they’d
overcome a lot in their lives but couldn’t overcome Clay. David had prayed on that a million times but sometimes even God couldn’t heal a broken heart. Clay showed up in David’s dreams all the time. Just like he had always been—brash and funny and confident. Like he didn’t care he’d been killed outside a village few people in his own country could even name.

David parked in the driveway beside a black Lincoln four-door. Two men in dark suits by the Lincoln eyed him hard. David nodded and started up the walk and saw Dick Nixon coming from the house. Frown on his face, lips pursed. Gray suit and fresh haircut. Wing tips heavy on the concrete. Another Secret Service guy behind him.