Earth Angel (14 page)

The guns looked serious, boxy and thick and dark. Too heavy to be held up by the thin glass shelves. But they looked kind
of silly too, efficient but somehow poorly designed, like something boys in a treehouse would make over a summer out of scraps
from their dads’ workshops. Something forged out of heat and boredom.

I paced slowly along the showcase, looking for the 9-mm Browning that Tim had used at the clinic. I wanted to hold it, feel
what he felt. Police later discovered the gun was registered to a nurse at the hospital where Tim worked and that he had stolen
it from her purse a week before the shooting. He had gone in to visit the old gang—or so everyone thought—and come away with
the gun from
her purse which the whole staff knew she carried. She’d reported it missing but no one on the hospital staff was suspected,
least of all Tim, who’d often ranted against violence, even as he was wrist deep in the gunshot chest of one of its victims.
“We’re just the mop-up crew for people who can’t hold their water,” he’d often said, with blood freckling his face.

Tim had had the gun for a whole week. Where did he hide it? Many evenings since the killings I had lain awake in my bed imagining
every possible corner, drawer, cubby hole where it might have sat. If I’d been a better housekeeper, I might have found it
while dusting or putting away laundry. If I were a better doctor, I might have recognized symptoms of psychosis he surely
must have been exhibiting. If I were a better lover, he might have come to me with his pain instead of exploding it all over
everyone else.

“Can I show you anything special?” a woman asked. She was about sixty with short white hair and a leathery face. She wore
turquoise jewelry and a denim shirt that made her look like a rancher. “Have any questions about what you see?”

I shook my head. “Just looking. Browsing.”

“Lots of choices,” she said. “You looking for a totin’ gun or a home gun?”

“I don’t know yet.” I looked up and smiled at her to show I appreciated her concern.

She stared at me a few seconds, her eyes watery but steady. Then she smiled and said in a soft motherly voice, “Don’t force
it, dear. A gun’s not for everyone.” And she walked away to help another customer.

I left without buying anything. I don’t think I really intended to in the first place. I think I just wanted to scare myself.
Here I was in Santa Barbara about to embark on another mission of mercy and I just knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself
if I fucked up this one, too. A gun waiting for me every night might inspire me.

This mission I would handle differently from the others. My whole approach would be more forceful, more aggressive. Tim had
wanted to change lives and he had been successful. There was something to be learned from Tim.

The day I drove into the sleepy coastal town of Santa Barbara they were in the middle of their worst crime scare in the city’s
history. A serial child-kidnapper was loose and the city had extra police officers patrolling the streets and sidewalks as
if the town were under siege. The first victim had been a toddler who was found the next day unharmed miles from where she’d
last been seen. She was too young to tell the police anything, but a physical examination had indicated she had not been molested.
The next victim had been a seven-year-old girl. She turned up three days later by the side of a freeway, naked but wrapped
in an old blanket. Apparently she hadn’t been molested but had been drugged, stripped, and locked in a room without food or
water. The third victim was ten and she had been drugged, stripped, and spanked with a ruler hard enough to scar. This further
alarmed the experts because the introduction of violence into the kidnapper’s modus operandi probably meant the violence would
escalate with the age of each victim, as would the sexual molestation, until eventually they would merge into the same explosive
act of rape, torture, and murder.

What made this case even more unusual was that the kidnapper always sent some kind of cryptic note to the police before he
kidnapped someone. The police would not release the content of the notes, but reporters were constantly quoting “inside sources”
who said that the notes were the ravings of a crazy person. Psychiatrists across the country had been consulted to decipher
the messages. So far, inside sources said, the psychiatrists had been unsuccessful.

This was not why I’d gone to the gun store. I never felt
in any danger. First, I’d already survived a miscarriage and a mass murderer and my cat dying. I’d been arrested for trying
to give away money and I’d tried to have sex with an impotent man. I’d tried to make a blind date and ended up getting blackmailed.
What were the odds of my getting raped and murdered as well? Second, I didn’t feel as if I had a body that anyone, even the
most depraved maniac, would use to fulfill his need. I imagined that my body was now so light and insubstantial that no one
would notice me. I was surprised I didn’t just pass through walls.

After I left the gun store, I went for a walk along the main street. I passed a music store called Stairway to Heaven and
on impulse went in and bought a guitar. I also bought a book of Paul Simon songs and a book that showed me all the chords.
I’d played a little when I was a child and had hoped to be the next Joni Mitchell, write songs about love and betrayal. Then
I turned thirteen and lost interest.

I returned to my motel room and played the guitar until my fingers were too sore to press down the strings. Then I took a
hot bath and planned my full-frontal assault on my final victim, who I vowed I would win over through any means possible.
I wondered if the serial kidnapper was doing the same.

“Where are you now?”

“Germany. I’m taking a trip down the Rhine tomorrow.”

Carol sighed. “I hope you drown.”

“I will. In German beer and knockwurst.”

“I know what you’ll be doing with the knockwurst at night. Churning the old sauerkraut, eh?” She made a disgusting sound.

I laughed. “Thank you, Dr. Bitch.”

“You’re welcome, Dr. Slut.”

“When ya comin’ home, Red Ryder? We miss you around here.”

“Europe needs me,” I said. “I add glamour to the place.”

“What do you see when you look out your hotel window,” Carol asked wistfully.

I pushed aside the curtain of my motel window. The old man who ran the motel was feeding a bird that lived in the giant tree
next to the office. I couldn’t see the bird, but he whistled and threw peanuts up into the tree and they never fell back down.
A couple of blocks away, the beach was barely visible in the dusk light. “I see rosy-cheeked children in lederhosen plotting
to take over the world with the help of Hitler’s brain, which they have in a cryogenic lab in their clubhouse.”

“Speaking of which, your dad called me a couple of days ago. He said if I talked to you to have you call home.”

“My father?”

“Yup.”

“He hates the phone. Did he say what was wrong?”

“No. We chatted a little about the weather, about business. He didn’t say anything was wrong.”

But it was. When I called him he told me Mom had had a stroke.

The stroke was completely unexpected. They’d been getting ready to go out to breakfast at the International House of Pancakes
last Sunday, about the time I was being kissed on the mouth in the bathroom by Jackie Frears. The very night my mother was
lying in the hospital, I’d given Jackie a check for twenty thousand dollars. I’d become a pimp after all, and for a moment
I wondered if that act hadn’t passed directly through me and somehow struck my mother down, as if she were some sort of alter
ego that absorbed my sins like the painting in
Portrait of Dorian Gray
. Still, even if my matchmaking hadn’t been as righteous as I’d hoped for, Gordon Moore was deliriously happy. He’d made a
date with Jackie for dinner later in
the week, and he’d actually hugged me and kissed my cheek in gratitude. When I told him I was leaving town to prepare my company’s
move into the Bay Area, he handed me a letter of thanks he’d written addressed to the company president extolling my virtues
and how he would happily recommend our services to others. But he especially wanted the company to know what a gem they had
in me and how I’d changed his life.

There it was. I’d changed his life. Did it really matter how?

“Mom, are you dying?” I asked. Dad had already told me the incident was minor and that she was doing fine. “If you are, I’ve
got my eye on that blue silk pantsuit of yours.” Never in a million years would I wear anything my mother owned, but it made
her happy whenever I expressed jealousy over her glitzy wardrobe.

“I could’ve died. How would you know?” she said.

“The sun would dim and birds would drop from the sky.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Dad says you stopped smoking.”

“The doctor tricked me. I was weak and scared and he made me give my word. You know when I give my word I never go back on
it.”

I thought back on many times my mother had lied and wondered what the difference was between lying and giving one’s word.
But I didn’t say anything. She had a slight tremor in her hand, but the doctor had told her it would go away eventually.

“
Season. I was scared
,” she said in German. “
I was scared
.”

“Are you scared now?” I asked.

No.”

“Really?”

“No, of course not.” Suddenly her voice was harsh, as
if I accused her of lying. “Your father’s here. The doctor said the tests look fine. I’ll be home soon. What’s there to be
scared of?”

It was pointless to ask either her or my father any technical medical questions. They never got it right. Unlike the parents
of most of my colleagues, my parents didn’t call me for medical advice when they had a pain. They did not like sharing their
medical history with me. I used to think it was because they didn’t trust me as a doctor, having changed my diapers and seen
me eat paste and all that. But later I began to suspect it was because they didn’t want to know too much about the details
of their bodies and, in my efforts to impress them, I would explain in minute detail every little cough and sniffle. Rather
than impress them, I merely reminded them of how fragile and independent the human body is. How much it operates beyond our
control.

I knew her doctor; I’d call him tomorrow for the details about her chest X rays, ECG, blood tests, angiography, and MRI.

For a few seconds, I thought about abandoning my mission and flying home. I’d make soup, watch the talk shows with her. But
the more my mother talked, the less inclined I was to do so. She was in no immediate danger and there wasn’t really anything
I could do but sit around all day in the same house where they’d caught Larry Fine feeling me up on the sofa. Surely, I could
do more good right here, doing what I was doing. At least here I could actually make someone’s life better. There I could
only make mine more miserable.

I looked at the name I’d scribbled over and over while talking to my mother.

David Payton.

The entire page of the phone book where I’d found his name and address was covered with my various versions
of his name. Some made out of lightning, some out of brick, some looked like calligraphy from a monastery. I was like some
high-school teen with a crush.

David Payton.

It was his life I was about to change. He’d better be ready, because I was taking no prisoners.

I
DROVE OVER TO
D
AVID
P
AYTON’S ADDRESS, FOLLOWING THE DIREC
tions of the old guy running the motel, who was still whistling and tossing peanuts up into the tree as I got into my car.
Sweat was streaming from his brow from all that tossing and he looked a little wobbly. I still didn’t see the mystery bird
even though he pointed up and said, “See the little rascal? He just loves to toy with me.”

Twenty minutes later I parked my rental outside David Payton’s house. It was a small but lovely two-story, Spanish-style home
on a quiet street in the Santa Barbara hills. A neatly mown yard surrounded the house and bright flowers lined the sidewalk
leading to the front door. There was even a basketball hoop over the garage. It was the kind of manicured house and neighborhood
I’d grown up in and always secretly hoped I’d end up growing old in. A place where Brownies were safe to sell cookies and
small boys’ fights were always broken up by a vigilant mother.

I sat in the car and stared at the house, trying to decide what to do next. I had no plan. I’d been in Santa Barbara a week
now and all I’d accomplished was learning how to
play “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” on my new guitar. Every time I came to the line “Make a new plan, Stan,” I actually stopped
and tried to make a new plan. I’d devised complex ploys to meet David Payton, devious masquerades to transform his life. But
everything seemed too complicated, too artificial. Finally, frustrated and afraid I was just making excuses, I came to the
lyric, “Just hop on the bus, Gus,” and I hopped in my car and drove straight to his house.

I got out of the car, marched up the flower-lined sidewalk to his front door, and started knocking. I had no idea what I would
say when he opened the door. Maybe I would be direct and honest. Spill my guts. Perhaps the failure of my other attempts had
been due to my elaborate lies. After all, what good could come out of such dishonesty?

A police car drove by very slowly as I was knocking. The officer in the driver’s seat looked me over with a frown, his thick
black mustache also frowning. For a moment I thought they were looking for me and I froze like a prison escapee suddenly caught
in the guard’s spotlight. Then I remembered the serial kidnapper and tried to adopt the pose of a nonkidnapper. I was still
working on it when the patrol car disappeared around a corner.

I knocked three more times very hard. Come on, David Payton. Open up, this is your lucky day. You’re a winner in the Season
Gottlieb sweepstakes.