Down Solo (4 page)

I turn off Wilshire and go up Crescent Heights. There’s a church on my right. A few more blocks and then left on Fifth. The house is a neat little cottage with leaded windows and brown trim. I ring and wait. And wait.

The door opens and I look down at a tiny woman with close-cropped steel-gray hair. She has an oxygen tank on a strap at her side, with a clear plastic tube coiled once around her neck and then leading to her nose. She says, “Mr. Harris?” and when I nod, she steps back to let me in. She tells me her name is Cynthia Caffey and her friends call her CC, but when I put out my hand she doesn’t take it.

The house smells like cigarette smoke, which seems like a bad idea, but I judge no man. Nor widow. We settle at the kitchen table. She offers me lemonade, which I accept. The drink feels like nothing; it just goes down.

¤ ¤ ¤

“You say you work for a local paper.” Voice like rusty scissors, then a cough.

I tell her, “Yeah, I’m doing a series of articles on mining investments and kicking it off with Jason Hamel because he seems like such a colorful character.”

CC removes the plug from her nostrils and shuffles out of the room. She returns without the oxygen canister and lights a cigarette. I watch the first drag change her. She stares at me and blows a huge plume of smoke out of the side of her mouth and says, “Jason Hamel is no colorful character, he’s a murderer. He killed my husband and my brother-in-law and you can print that as your headline.”

“Why do you think that?” I jot down “Caffeys murdered?” in the notebook I brought as a prop.

“Because James was terrified of heights and would never have stood on the ledge they say he fell off of. Ridiculous. But try to get the Mexican police to investigate. Bah!” and she turns her head and hacks like a blender full of gravel until it blows over for her and she can take another drag.

“How did his brother die?” I move in my chair and the lemonade sloshes in my stomach. The motion isn’t necessary, but the living appear to be, well, animated.

“Just as ridiculous. Barbiturate overdose. Mark never took a drug in his life. Slept like a baby. I knew them both for over forty years. If Mark was suicidal, then I’m a tennis pro. Bullshit!”

“Why would Mr. Hamel want them dead?”

“He had something up his sleeve; I don’t know what. They had a business deal, and he had some money invested. Then the deal went south. My house got ransacked while I was at my husband’s funeral. I think Jason took all the papers having to do with the Mexico property.”

“Are there copies of those papers?” Maybe I wouldn’t even have to go to Jimmy’s.

“Nope. He got them all. The thing of it is, James and Mark were just about to publish the drilling results. They were very excited.” She shakes her head and pulls on her Camel. “You know he’s a religious nut, don’t you?”

I tell her I’ve seen his website, but haven’t yet met the man himself. She says, “Funny way to write an article, coming to someone as peripheral as me before going to your subject. Who did you say you worked for?”

“
City Beat
,” I tell her. “He seems to have a busy schedule, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be interviewing him next.” She settles down after this, so I ask, “Did Jason Hamel and your husband have any disagreements that you know of?”

Now she looks amused. “If you mean besides how to run a business venture, yes, they did. James and Mark were members of the Skeptic Society. They were atheists with a capital A and had their own website—besides the mining site—where they debunked everything from Sasquatch to the Virgin Birth. Jason was very offended.”

We hang out in silence for a while. It seems like she’s out of material for me, and I’m out of questions. At the door, I thank her for her time. She points a finger up at me and says, “You print what I told you. That man is a murderer.”

¤ ¤ ¤

In my car, I call Jimmy and leave a message. There are two voicemails from Tanya, plus a text message that says, Call me NOW.
Sure thing, lady, I’ll jump to it.
I delete them all and head back. As I approach Wilshire, the church catches my eye. The Z makes a turn as if it has a mind of its own and I’m in the church parking lot.

I’ve never been much of a fan of organized religion. When I was about fourteen I told my mother that I felt closer to God while I was sitting on my surfboard on a freezing day at the beach than sitting in church listening to someone drone on about the Bible. I never had to go to church again. On the other hand, my condition is peculiar and I don’t know whom else to talk to.

The church is empty. I look down the aisle at the altar and wait. It’s quiet and serene, shafts of sunlight pouring through stained glass in interesting shades of silver. I take a seat in a pew and leave the body. I hover for a second; it looks like it’s asleep, not about to keel over, so I roam. I find the priest in his office, sitting at a desk, writing. He stops and looks up, as if he senses me, but then resumes.

I go back to the body and enter, stand it up, make it cough, and wait. The priest comes out through a door to the left of the altar and walks halfway to where I stand. He puts his hand out, palm up, inviting me forward. He’s a small man, probably around sixty, Hispanic, with rimless glasses, and dressed in gray slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back. I guess he wasn’t expecting company. When I reach him he gestures for me to sit. I don’t know why but I like him already.

“I am Father Tomas. What can I do for you, my son?” The accent is slight, the voice deep for a man his size. He sits next to me and turns to face me.

I don’t have a plan, so I’m surprised when my mouth says, “I’m dead.”

He says, “We can feel that way at times. Sometimes we are spiritually dead and ready for an awakening. Depression is another matter. Perhaps if we talk we can discern your problem.” He gazes at me with affection and concern, and I feel bad. I don’t want to disturb his universe, but somebody has to hear it.

So I tell him, “No, Father. There’s a bullet in my head and I’m clinically dead. I woke up in a morgue and walked out while no one was looking.”

Now he smiles a little, like I’m pulling a fast one on him. I take off my cap and show him the wound. This gets his attention, and he tells me I need immediate medical help.

I show him the report from the morgue. An idea pops into my head. I put the cap back on and say, “Will you try an experiment, just to humor me?” The smile wavers, and he nods slightly. I say, “Go back to your office, lock your door, and write something private on the page under the page you were already writing on. Then come back out here.” He nods again, gets up, and walks back to the door he came through earlier.

I leave the body as he’s walking away and follow him. He locks the door. I watch him lean over his desk and turn back the page he had been writing on. He looks over his shoulder to make sure I’m not there. He takes a pen from a coffee mug on his desk and writes
Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?
and covers the page. Now he takes off his glasses and puts them in the mug along with the pen.

I wait till he returns before entering the body; perhaps he can sense a corpse when he sees one. I watch him watching me, him standing, me seemingly asleep. It’s a peaceful scene. I almost hate to ruin it, but I slip in and open my eyes and say, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He blinks, his mouth falls open. I tell him, “Also, you left your glasses in the coffee mug.”

I watch him reassemble his composure. He does it from the inside out; he’s making new space for something that doesn’t fit anything he’s ever known. I watch as shock and fear and doubt assert themselves and dissolve, replaced by a widening of the eyes and an acceptance of what I’ve told him. Wonder, that’s what I see.

“To bring someone back from the dead is the province of Christ alone. You have brought me a true miracle.”

“I’m not sure I’m back from the dead. I can leave this body, or I can re-enter and make it seem to work. Is that life?”

“It is certainly something new and different, but I’m sure it has a purpose.” He sits next to me again and folds his hands together. “Will you pray with me?”

“May I confess first?”

“Yes, of course.”

I tell him I’ve never done this before and don’t know the protocol. He tells me, “Say what’s on your mind. Say what’s in your heart. Unburden yourself, for you are already forgiven.”

The words pour out. I am not in charge of this. I might run the body, but I’m not running the mouth; it’s on its own. I hear myself say, “My sins of commission are trivial. I have told many untruths. My sins of omission are another matter. Selfishness and sloth. An unwillingness to face conflict. To make commitments. I have failed my daughter. I have medicated pain until I numbed myself to life. I have squandered the gift of living and been useful to no one.” I have always known these things, but never articulated them, not even to myself. It’s a shabby confession: Charlie Miner, junkie loser. Make that dead junkie loser.

Father Tomas regards me contemplatively; I am his personal miracle. We sit in silence. Now he takes my hand and slides off the bench to a kneeling position, pulling me along with him. We kneel in silence; perhaps I’m supposed to be praying. My eyes are closed. I hear Father Tomas say, “Father, forgive us our sins. May we find peace and purpose in your love. Amen.” He gives a slight, affirmative shake to my hand and we stand.

I thank him and turn to leave. I don’t know what just happened but I feel something new, a sprig of optimism. Perhaps this is what they call hope. As I walk toward the church doors, I notice a hint of blue and yellow on the floor. I turn and look up at the stained glass.

I walk out into the sunlight. I will the body to move. I will the heart to pump the blood to feed the cells to imitate life.

¤ ¤ ¤

Back in the Z, I crank the ignition and buckle up. I check my cell: four calls and three text messages, all from Tanya. I call Jimmy and leave another message. It’s just past three and now I’m worried. Jimmy always calls back.

Traffic’s bad. I take Olympic most of the way. My cell rings and I answer it. Tanya screams at me, “Charlie, everything I have is on the line here. You can’t just ignore me.”

“I’m heading over there right now,” I tell her. I turn south on Centinela.

“Over where? I’ll meet you there, where is it?” Give me a demanding female voice and my mind switches off. I tell her I have to do this alone or it won’t happen, and that I’ll call her the second I have it. The reports are in Jimmy’s bathroom, and there’s nothing I can do until Jimmy lets me in.

Jimmy’s Hummer is in his spot in the underground parking. I slide in next to it and park in his guest spot. I call one more time but get voice mail. When I push his suite number from the panel I get nothing. A resident uses a passkey to open the door to the lobby and doesn’t object when I follow her in. We ride up the elevator in silence.

I take the final few floors alone. I take off my baseball cap and check my head in the mirrored wall of the elevator. There’s almost enough hair, I decide, to do a comb-over, so I push a few strands over the hole with my fingers. I guess it’s better, but I put the cap back on.

There are only four suites at the top, and Jimmy’s is to the left. I’ve got a bad feeling about this and it gets worse when I see his door, which looks a lot like the front door to my own house, smashed inward and splintered to bits where the locks took the frame with them.

I push the door open and call out to Jimmy. Nothing. I duck into the guest bedroom, which is the first turn off the hall, and into the bathroom. The cupboards are open and the towels are on the floor, but the geologist’s reports are still tucked into the green one. I fold them up and put them in my back pocket.

I walk down the hallway and into the dining/living room, which opens to the kitchen on my right. All the cupboards are open—dishes and cereal boxes, vitamin bottles and rolls of paper towels, silverware and placemats—all are scattered across the counters and the floor. Jimmy’s workspace, the dining room table, has blood on it. Furniture has been turned over, lamps broken, and there’s a huge dent in one of the walls.

I hear a groan from Jimmy’s bedroom. He’s lying at the foot of his bed, bleeding from his mouth, his nose, his ear, and a hole in his chest. His room looks like a grenade went off in it. I kneel down and say, “Jimmy,” and he opens his eyes.

He says, “We’ve got to get this place cleaned up before the cops come.” He sounds as bad as he looks, but he pushes himself up to a sitting position. Now he’s using the bed and trying to stand up.

“Jesus, Jimmy, that looks like a bad idea.” He lurches to his dresser and opens the top drawer. He pulls out a purple Crown Royal bag and slips it off a 9mm Beretta. He pulls back the slide and checks the chamber, then lays the weapon on the dresser ready to fire. Next he retrieves what looks like a drafting kit, except when he opens it I see three neatly cushioned hypodermic needles and several glass ampules labeled “USP Morphine.” Blood leaks from his chest while he loads the syringe.

“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.” He doesn’t need to tie off; his veins are already enormous. He sticks the needle in and pulls back the slightest bit until a drop of blood swirls into the liquid morphine, then looks up and says, “Gym bag, safe, scale, get the fuck out, in that order, pronto.” I watch as he pushes the plunger and empties the syringe. I check his eyes and for a moment there’s nobody home, and then Jimmy’s back, pulling it together, an act of pure will. He’s moving the body. But it’s different. Jimmy’s damaged, but he’s not dead.

There’s a third bedroom. Jimmy brings his gun and dope kit. I pick up the gym bag. The safe is in the corner. Jimmy kneels down to open it. Now there are footsteps in the hallway. Jimmy turns, in a crouch, gun up.

There’s a crackle of static and a garbled squawk of amplified gibberish and I whisper loud to Jimmy, “Ditch the gun, NOW, ditch the fucking gun.” But he doesn’t and it’s too late and there’s a cop at the bedroom door and another one behind him.

“Freeze! Put the weapon down. Put the weapon down.” The cop is young, white, the all-American boy, looking smart in his uniform but clearly a first-timer at this kind of action. He’s got his own gun out in front of him, pointed at Jimmy’s chest. If he sees the hole that’s already bleeding there, it’s not helping; his hands are shaking, he looks ready to shoot or jump out the window. He moves to his right and his partner comes in gun first and motions for me to get on the floor.

Jimmy looks from one cop to the other, then at his own gun, and says, “Shit,” and drops the gun and keels over.