Earth Angel (38 page)

“We’ve been feeding Gus,” I heard her daughter say.

“Have you, sweetheart?” Lt. Trump said with forced cheer.

“Your daughter is very sweet,” the old man said. “A heartbreaker.”

I went to the window and watched Trump cross the street with her daughter beside her. She walked stiffly and looked around
a lot, as if ready to draw her gun at the slightest provocation. Her daughter knelt at the curb to retie her Reeboks and Trump
stopped her and hurried her into the car. They drove off with a squeal.

I stuffed the kidnapper’s note in my back pocket, slipped into my sandals, and walked outside. Mr. Kessler sat in a chair
under the tree reading the newspaper.

“Sorry about ratting you out,” he said. “Guess I’ll always be a cop at heart.”

I shrugged. “What choice did you have? You’re the son of Wyatt Earp’s deputy, right?”

He looked at me as if uncertain how to take that. Was I making fun of him or complimenting him? “Right,” he said and went
back to his newspaper.

“Where’s the nearest pharmacy or supermarket?”

“Which do you want, pharmacy or supermarket?”

“Whichever is closer.”

“Three blocks,” he said, and pointed.

I walked the three blocks to Thrifty’s and went straight to their books and magazines section. I found the most current Leonard
Maltin’s
Movie and Video Guide
. More than nineteen thousand movies. Over fifteen hundred pages. This would be a lot more efficient than wandering through
a video store. If I scanned one page a minute, I could cover the whole book in fifteen hundred minutes, which is twenty-five
hours. We might not have that much time. I might miss it the first time through. If I did one page every ten seconds, I could
cut that down to four hours.

On the way to the cashier, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror of the sunglasses display. I made a detour and picked
up a box of hair coloring, one that matched my real hair. It was worth a try.

I passed the pharmacy counter and something came over me. I pulled out my prescription pad and filled it out for potassium
chloride. The gray-haired man in the white lab coat asked to see my DEA card and my state physician and surgeon license, which
I showed him. I could tell he recognized my name.

“Potassium chloride?” he said. He was suffering from ectropion:
His lower eyelid of his left eye was weakened, causing the lid to turn outward revealing the inner surface. This usually resulted
in problems with tearduct drainage and could result in chronic conjuctivitis. If he hadn’t waited too long, a little lid-tightening
surgery (slicing out a wedge of tissue) could have corrected the problem. “Dr. Gottlieb?”

“Hmmm?”

“Just double-checking. You want potassium chloride, correct?”

“Yes. And a needle.”

I could understand his reluctance. The body of the average person contains about five ounces of potassium which, when combined
with the body’s sodium and calcium, regulates the heart rhythm, water balance, muscle contractions, and nerve impulses. A
low level of potassium in the blood, called hypokalemia, can cause mild effects, such as fatigue and drowsiness. Excess of
potassium can cause death. If one injects ten milliliters of potassium chloride, the heart will stop almost instantly—and
the drug will dissipate into the bloodstream, practically undetectable.

I don’t know why I bought it, exactly. I carried my white plastic bag, with a big red Thrifty’s stamped on the side, out the
store and down to the beach. I sat in the sand with the bag on my lap. If this bag were a note from the kidnapper, what clues
would it reveal? On the one hand, she’s vain enough to want to dye her hair when the roots show. Or perhaps she just wants
to get back to who she was before her magnificent failure as the brown-haired bespectacled folk-singing angel who has made
every person’s life that she’s touched worse than before. Then there’s the video guide. One last shot at doing something right.
One more spin of the wheel, one more hand of blackjack. Double or nothing. Save the girl, save the girl, save the girl.

And if she fails, there’s always potassium chloride: finally something she couldn’t screw up.

“D
AVID FIGURED IT ALL OUT
. A
BOUT WHY YOU CAME TO SEE US
.” Rachel sat in the sand beside me. She pulled her hair behind her ear on the side facing me. I hadn’t seen her coming, but
I wasn’t surprised. I felt incapable of being surprised anymore. A mermaid could have beached herself in front of me, I would
have said, “Roll over, fish-breath, you’re blocking the view.”

Rachel smelled like the ocean, like David. Or maybe that
was
the ocean. “David explained it to us. What you were trying to do.”

“What was I trying to do?”

“Help people. Help the families of the people your boyfriend shot.”

I didn’t say anything. Would anybody do anything so foolish?

“The reporters don’t know about Lisa being his ex-wife and all. But David says they’ll find out soon. Then they’ll know what
you were trying to do, too.”

“How did you find me? The old man tell you?”

“What old man?”

“From the motel.”

“No. I went to the motel. I saw your car across the street at the other motel but when I showed them your picture from the
newspaper they said you weren’t staying there either. Since your car was still there I figured you must have walked somewhere.
Josh and I have been cruising for a couple of hours looking.” She turned and pointed. Josh was leaning against a blue Lexus,
the one I saw last night. He was smoking a cigarette looking off in every direction but ours.

“Whose car?” I asked.

“His friend Vernon’s. Vernon’s mom’s, actually, but she lets him use it. They’re pretty rich.”

I remembered Vernon, the mouthy one on the trip to Tijuana, the one who got into the fistfight. “How’s David doing? He mad
at me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I should talk for him.” She brushed some sand from her bare knees. “He feels bad, though.”

“I didn’t want him to. You either. That is, if you’re feeling bad.”

“I don’t know how to feel. I mean, part of me feels bad because David’s upset and Josh is in even more trouble for making
those videos and selling them to the TV station. So it kinda sucks around our house these days.”

More of my handiwork. I took the Brady Bunch and turned them into despondent dysfunctional.

“On the other hand,” Rachel continued, “it’s also kinda cool to be in the middle of all this strange stuff. I think it’s great
the way you’re doing this whole crime thing with the police. It’s like a real-life mystery. You’re solving a mystery.”

I looked over at her. “Nothing is being solved here, Rachel.”

“Sure there is. You’re going to catch the kidnapper, stop him from hurting other girls. Book ’em, Dan-o, case closed.”

“It’s not that simple. Even if they catch this guy, what has been solved? Someone else will go out and do the same thing—or
worse. The real mystery is why people do it and how to stop it for good. And that will never be solved. Locking up one demented
criminal doesn’t solve crime. You see? Nothing is solved, at best its attention is diverted.”

She didn’t say anything. She scooped up a handful of sand and let it funnel down onto her thigh. “I asked Rabbi Schuller about
you. He said it was very spiritual what you did, or tried to do, anyway. Help people like that. It’s very Jewish, you know.
In Judaism, it’s not enough to repent when you do something wrong, you’re supposed to make restitution to the person wronged.
He said Jewish morals are about taking action to solve the world’s problems, thereby creating a paradise in this world. I
think that’s what you were trying to do.”

“I was trying to feel better, that’s all. Nothing more.”

She scooped up more sand and poured it on her other thigh, careful not to jiggle the sand from the first thigh. “What were
you going to do for us?”

“Buy you a new water heater.”

She made a face. “Seriously?”

I nodded. “And that camp you wanted to go to. And maybe a car for Josh. But I guess he can afford his own car now.”

“You still want to do something for me?”

“What did you have in mind?”

She turned and all the sand fell from her legs. “I want you to give me an abortion. You’re a doctor. You can do it, right?”

An odd sensation came over me and I realized at that moment that somewhere in my mind I’d had some strange fantasy that Rachel
would have the baby and David and I would raise it. I saw David and me hanging laundry on a clothesline—something I’ve never
actually done—with
the baby on the porch, laughing. There seemed to be wheat fields all around us. David wore suspenders. I pressed my palms
to my eyes to wipe the image away.

“You’ve done it before, haven’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, I’ve done it before. But I don’t think I should with you. I’m too close to you. But I will take you to a place and I
will observe if you want me to.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I have a friend,” I said. “She’ll do it. She’s very good, better than me actually.”

“But you want me to tell David first, right?”

“I want you to, but it’s not a condition.”

She stood up, brushed her shorts. “Josh wants to talk to you.” She waved at him. He hesitated, started toward us, threw his
cigarette down and kicked sand over it. “Don’t expect much,” she said, and walked away.

Josh took his time, walking slowly, as if he didn’t care when or if he arrived. As soon as he was near me, he started talking.
“Look, I’m sorry about what happened. I didn’t know about your boyfriend killing all those people or anything. I just wanted
to make my money back, that’s all. It was my money and David had no right taking it. And I didn’t ask you to bail me out with
the cops or try to give me something or save me or whatever the hell you’re trying to do. I didn’t ask for any of it. The
way I figure, whatever you did, you did for yourself, not for me. I mean, you’re kinda screwed up, which I can understand
and all, because of your boyfriend going nuts. But that doesn’t give you the right to butt into my life. I mean, David’s ex-wife
wasn’t even killed there. She killed herself. We shouldn’t even be on your charity list.” He gestured with his hand as if
he had more to say, but then abruptly hurried off, practically jogging to the car.

“Apology accepted,” I said.

I returned to my motel room. I taped the potassium chloride to the bottom of the bathroom sink and taped
the kidnapper’s note to the bathroom mirror. While I worked the dye through my hair, I studied the note, looking for clues
that would narrow down the field of nineteen thousand movies.

I am not the enemy of the people. I do not have the mark of the beast. And to show you my good faith, I leave you a sign,
for I am a diamond in the ruff. Catch me if you can, Homer. P.S. Excellent work so far, Dr. Gottlieb, I hope you find this
more challenging.

An Enemy of the People
. A play by Ibsen that Steve McQueen made right before he died. He had a thick beard, I remembered, and wore wire-rimmed glasses
like mine. I leafed through Leonard Maltin’s book, staining the pages with hair dye. I read the entry but couldn’t see how
it applied. I dog-eared the page and marked the title with a blond-dye fingerprint.

Catch Me If You Can
. A movie starring the Dave Clark Five, trying to capitalize on the Beatles’ success with
A Hard Day’s Night
. Director John Boorman’s first film, before going on to direct
Deliverance
. I thumbed through the book. It wasn’t even listed. Perhaps too obscure, even for the kidnapper. Then I remembered the title
was later changed to
Having a Wild Weekend
. It was listed, but again, I could find no other connection. What did Homer have to do with it? Was he referring to the Kirk
Douglas film
Ulysses
, based on Homer’s
Odyssey?
He battled a Cyclops, was that important? Was our kidnapper one-eyed?

I made a list of movies involving diamonds, diamond mines, diamond heists (
Diamonds, Diamonds for Breakfast, Diamonds Are Forever…
)

I made a list of movies involving faith, faith healers (
Elmer Gantry, The Rainmaker, Leap of Faith…
)

I made a list of films involving signs, sign language, signboards, astrological signs…

Four hours later—the bed scattered with dozens of lists—I was making a list of movies about “the mark of
the beast” or involving a satanic demon:
The Exorcist
movies, the
Omen
movies,
Legend
with Tom Cruise,
Angel Heart
with Robert De Niro as the devil…

Robert De Niro.

Why did I pause?

I read the note again.

I saw no connection with De Niro, except that he played a lot of demented characters, and the author of this note was demented.
He played a kidnapper in
Taxi Driver
. “You talking’ to me?
You
talking’ to
me?
” he’d snapped and shot all these people. Like Tim. Was the kidnapper referring to Tim here?

The pieces of yellow paper with their desperate lists covered my bed like dead leaves. I pushed them aside and stretched out
face-down across the bed. I wrapped a pillow around the back of my head. It was too much information. Too many possibilities.
Each word led to a million paths.

I started yelling into the mattress. “Fuckshitcuntmother-fuckingbastard!” I lifted my head to see if anyone would come busting
down my door. When they didn’t, I pressed my lips against the mattress and hollered: “I’m sorry, Tim, you bastard. I’m sorry
I wasn’t there for you but you should have said something. You should have said
something
! When men flip out they kill other people; women kill themselves. And we feel sorry for you guys because of the pressure
you must have endured and we feel contempt for you women because you couldn’t hold your water. Well, fuck you. Tim, you coward!”
I lifted my head again. There was a large wet spot on the bedspread where I’d been yelling. A confessional orgasm.