Spider Season (26 page)

I entered the little café, which took up one side of the business, and was shown to a doorway covered by heavy curtains. I parted the curtains and stepped into the dimness of the adjoining tavern, where a few old Chinese men perched on stools along the bar, nursing beers and highballs. Sinatra was playing on the jukebox—“Summer Wind”—which was perfect for a place that looked and smelled like it hadn’t changed in half a century or more.

Haukness entered a moment later in his usual western-style garb but with his jacket off to accommodate the heat, coming in through the door off the street. He asked me if I wanted a drink. I told him I’d better not and he ordered a martini with an olive for himself. The bartender was a small Chinese man with slumped shoulders and heavy bags under his sad eyes. He mixed the martini and placed a stemmed glass in front of Haukness, full to the brim, and wandered off. As the detective raised the glass to his lips he stopped short of taking a sip, his eyes fixed on the cocktail’s surface.

“Excuse me, bartender.”

The bartender shuffled back, regarding Haukness listlessly.

“I’m afraid there’s a cockroach in my drink,” the detective said.

I squinted to see a fat, brown cockroach floating upside down in the martini, doing the backstroke. Without a word, the bartender took the glass, removed the toothpick and olive, laid them on a cocktail napkin, tossed the drink into a sink, mixed a new martini in a fresh glass, placed it on the bar in front of Haukness, then picked up the toothpick and placed the same olive back in the drink.

“Cockroach no on olive,” he explained matter-of-factly, and shuffled off again.

Haukness took a sip, smacked his lips appreciatively, and said, “Let’s get some grub.”

He strode to the draped doorway in his fancy boots, parted the curtains, and I followed him through.

*   *   *

“You’re sure he’s your kid?”

Haukness and I sat at a deuce near the back, with platters of chicken chop suey and almond green beans and a pot of hot green tea on the table between us.

“It all adds up,” I said, and laid the details out for him.

“Unless you’ve had the blood test, you can’t be certain.”

“I don’t see it going any other way, Detective.”

“You never know until you know, do you?”

“I won’t know unless I find him.”

“Maybe that won’t happen,” Haukness said, his Texas drawl starting to take on a tougher tone. “Maybe it’s better if it doesn’t.”

“What are you getting at?”

He drained his martini, ate the olive, set the glass down, and reached for the pot. He poured himself a cup of tea, blew across it a few times to cool it, and took a sip.

“Lance Zarimba is a troubled individual,” he said.

“I got that impression some time ago.”

“No—I mean
seriously
troubled.”

“You care to expand on that?”

He piled chop suey and green beans onto his plate, started eating, then resumed talking.

“You already know he was in the Corps, that he served three tours in Iraq. What you might not know is that he came back with two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. Got himself involved in some pretty horrific stuff over there. Besides the physical wounds, which include brain trauma, he’s suffering from PTSD.”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Haukness nodded, and went on. “Marines don’t like to complain. It’s considered weak, not in keeping with the manly tradition of the Corps. Zarimba let it go a long time, without telling anybody about the hell raging inside his head.” Haukness cleared his throat and sipped more tea, looking less comfortable. “I’m getting into dicey territory here, Justice. Medical information that’s confidential, that kind of thing.”

“Either you’re going to tell me or you’re not, Detective. I have a feeling you’re going to tell me, or you wouldn’t have brought it up.”

Haukness set his little cup down, spun it slowly several times between his long fingers, then looked up straight into my eyes.

“Lance is on meds. He was taking his meds as directed when we arrested him after that skirmish the two of you had. We counted his pills against the prescription date when we had him at the hospital.”

“What kind of meds?”

“Psychoactive drugs, mood stabilizers—substances that act on the central nervous system to alter brain function. Because of patient privacy issues, the VA wouldn’t get too specific about his various diagnoses, and Lance didn’t have much to say on the subject. But I still have sources within the Corps. I learned a few things.”

He paused again to warm his tea and stare at the cup when he put it down. I scooped food onto my plate and dug in. Across the small restaurant, a fly buzzed near a window. A Chinese woman honed in on it and smacked it with a flyswatter. Haukness continued to stare silently at his cup.

“You want to share, Detective? Or do we play Twenty Questions?”

“Don’t be such a smart-ass. This isn’t easy for me.”

“Because he’s a jarhead like you?”

“That’s part of it, yes.”

“It’s not easy for me, either, Detective. He’s my son. But I want to know who he is and what makes him tick and if he wants me to be part of his life. If you can help me along those lines, I’m willing to listen.”

Haukness considered this a moment, then started up again.

“This war’s been different from any other our guys ever had to fight. The roadside bombs, the suicide bombers, the hit-and-run, the different factions we’re chasing over there who disappear back into the city like phantoms, blending in with the rest of the population. We knew all about this before we ever went in, the intelligence was there, the warnings, but we ignored them and now we’re up to our eyeballs in it.”

“Include me out, Detective. I wasn’t among those waving the flag and beating my chest to invade and occupy.”

“Just shut the fuck up and listen, will you?”

I gave him a small salute and he continued.

“They’re seeing a lot of what they call silent injuries over there—brain trauma but no visible wounds, from all the IEDs, the improvised explosive devices. When they explode, they rattle a soldier’s brain around inside his skull like a yolk inside an egg. The brain’s intact afterward, but it no longer functions the way it should. There’s thousands of soldiers suffering from these silent injuries, tens of thousands, only they don’t show up on any casualty list. The government likes to keep as many names off those lists as possible.”

“Lance is one of them?”

Haukness nodded. “There were three dozen men in his platoon. Nearly two dozen came back from their last tour, but only about half can think straight or can get through a night without nightmares that cause them to wake up screaming. And those are the ones who are pretending to be okay, who aren’t telling anyone but their wives or girlfriends about it.”

“Or their boyfriends,” I said.

“I don’t need to hear a gay rights speech right now, if it’s all the same.”

“Continue, Detective.”

“Lance was one of those who kept it to himself. Then some sergeant said the wrong thing at the wrong time and Lance almost killed him with his bare hands. Went absolutely berserk. So the psychiatrists finally checked him out. The Corps gave him a medical discharge and twenty-five hundred a month in military disability. They tell me that some of these guys get better with time, lead normal lives. But not all of them.”

“I appreciate the information.”

“Do you? Are you sure you’re the one this kid needs in his life? With your history?”

“I guess that would be up to him, wouldn’t it?”

“You think that all this publicity you’re putting him through right now is in his best interest? Or is it something you’re doing out of guilt, because you plugged some broad back in college without using latex and now your son shows up and you suddenly want to do the right thing and play daddy?”

“I’m not sure, Detective. I can’t answer that.”

“Well, you better be damn sure, because you could be messing with a time bomb. Who knows what might set him off? You really want to put this kid in a pressure cooker right now?”

“He came looking for me, remember?”

“Yeah, but can you give him what he needs? From what I know about you, you aren’t exactly a role model of emotional stability.”

“I’m working on it.”

“You’re fifty fucking years old! Isn’t it a little late to be working on it?”

I pushed my plate away and swallowed some lukewarm tea. “What are you suggesting? That I forget about him? That I pretend he doesn’t exist?”

“All I’m asking is that you think this through and proceed with his best interest in mind. There are organizations that help vets in trouble. Maybe they’re better equipped to handle a situation like this. My wife and I could help in that department. We’ve done it before, for other soldiers.”

“I’m still his father. That’s not going to change.”

Haukness seemed to soften a little, maybe looking for a compromise. “This video—can you do anything to get it off the air?”

“It’s a hot story now. It’s out there, on the airwaves, in cyberspace. There’s no way to stop it.”

I told him about my booking on
Jerry Rivers Live,
how Lance was sure to be a focal point of the hour.

“Jesus damned Christ,” he muttered, looking away as if I disgusted him.

“Maybe we’ll find him before then,” I said. “Maybe it doesn’t have to go that far. Who knows, maybe he’ll get back in touch with you, you being a fellow Marine and all.”

Haukness studied me keenly. “You’re not going to leave him alone, are you?”

“Not unless he asks me to.”

“Hasn’t he already done that? Didn’t he tell you that he was splitting and you wouldn’t see him around anymore?”

“He said that, yes.”

“So leave him be, Justice. Do the right thing for once in your goddamned life.” He pushed his chair back and stood, grabbing his jacket. “He’s got enough problems to worry about, without adding you to them.”

I watched him weave through the tables and settle the bill near the front door, before he stepped back out into the stifling August heat.

*   *   *

I drove away from Chinatown feeling like my life had just been turned inside out. I couldn’t get my head around it, couldn’t figure out how to proceed.

Maybe Haukness was right, I thought. My past was littered with all kinds of bad choices and trouble. Maybe it would be better if I just butted out. I heard Haukness’s words echo in my head:
He’s got enough problems to worry about, without adding you to them.

Then I thought of all the people I’d abandoned in my life, all the challenges I’d run away from. My mother, after the business with my old man. My sister, who got hooked on junk after my mother died, checking out at nineteen. Jacques, in his last days, when he was dying and needed me most and I detached emotionally to blunt the pain. How was I supposed to live with myself if I didn’t at least try to be there for Lance?

Only hours before, everything had seemed under control. Now I felt like a mobile on a string, twisting in the wind. If there was anyone I needed right then, I thought, it was Ismael. Ismael would listen to me. Ismael would help me sort things out.

*   *   *

The Boyle Hotel was less than three miles east.

I scooted out of Chinatown in the Metro and reached Mariachi Plaza in fifteen minutes flat. A minute later, I was crossing the lobby, past a group of brown-skinned men playing cards and polishing their trumpets. I took the stairs to the third floor, too impatient to wait for the lumbering old elevator. But as I reached the landing and turned the corner, I suddenly pulled back, pressing against the wall.

Halfway down the hall, a woman was knocking on Ismael’s door. She carried a decent-sized handbag, big enough to hold a couple of reporter’s notebooks and a portable recorder in case she should need them. She had no reason to be there, not that I could imagine, but there she was.

I peered around the corner to see Ismael open the door and welcome Cathryn Conroy in like an old friend.

TWENTY-SIX

I drove home trapped in a maelstrom of emotions. Along the way, dozens of bars beckoned, offering me the easy way out.

It had been years since I’d anesthetized myself with alcohol. I wasn’t one of those ex-drinkers who kept count, looking for gold stars and applause, so I’m not sure exactly how many years, days, hours, and minutes it had been. But I could still remember the taste as the first couple of shots went down, the warm, reassuring feeling that came with blessed relief. I could still recall the wonderful calm that settled over me as the alcohol hit my bloodstream and then my brain, the calm before the storm. It was the storm I couldn’t abide, the rage and violence that rose up as the level in the bottle dropped, and the ruination that always followed. So every time I saw the word
cocktails
in neon that afternoon, I fixed my eyes straight ahead, hitting the accelerator instead of the brake.

I reached my apartment, locked myself in, pulled the shades, and took my phone off the hook. There were fourteen messages waiting for me on my voice mail, all from reporters or producers wanting to interview me about Lance and the video. I saved the messages without returning the calls.

For hours, I wracked my brain trying to figure things out, trying to decide if reuniting with Lance was a good or bad idea, trying to find some explanation for Conroy’s meeting with Ismael that for some reason he hadn’t told me about. But the harder I tried the more dead ends I ran into, the more questions filled my head. I was on an emotional roller-coaster ride, and the wheels were close to coming off the tracks.

At dusk, Maurice tapped on my door, probably to invite me down to dinner. I pretended I wasn’t home until I heard his footsteps turn back down the stairs. I stood behind a curtain at the kitchen window, watching him cross the patio and enter the house, wondering what the hell I was going to do.

*   *   *

Cathryn Conroy called the next morning to ask if we could meet for lunch in Koreatown.

Chinatown one day, Koreatown the next. Thai Town, Filipinotown, Little Russia, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Little Tokyo, Little Persia, Little India—we could have met anywhere in polyglot L.A.; I didn’t care. I just wanted to get the interview over with and not see Conroy again, or think about her clandestine visit with Ismael, which I couldn’t get out of my mind. What the hell, I thought. Facing a few more of her hard questions couldn’t make my life any more complicated than it already was.