The Chinese Beverly Hills (22 page)

“It’s no big deal, Zook. I was just a guy like yourself, trying hard to figure things out.”

“Yeah, yeah. Beer on the table. And why are you here again?”

Jack Liffey opened the hamper and took out the drinks, but not the books. “First, tell me why you’re messing around with the cops.”

“Fuck you, fuckwad.”

Jack Liffey smiled. “Yeah, I knew your twin in ’Nam.”

That silenced him for a moment, until he grabbed one of the beer cans. “Who’s this twin?”

“He was an asshole that every officer and MP could play like a pinball. When I met him, I thought I saw a guy brave enough to speak truth to power, but he liked being their pal instead.”

“Who said that about truth?”

“It’s from the Quakers. But maybe you like being a cop’s buddy too much.”

The young man stared at him and seemed to make some inner decision. “Don’t be so mean, Mr. Jack. Sit a while. You’re a lot more interesting than the crater-face cop, cha cha cha.” He found one of the foil-wrapped sandwiches and unwrapped it. “Ah, Mr. Torpedo.” He opened the bun. “Mr.
Meatball
Torpedo, the best thing. This is from Ugo’s on Ynez, isn’t it?”

“Sure.”

Zook was obviously very hungry, and began to eat at once. Jack Liffey sat down on a creaking lawn chair, relishing the warmth of the old Franklin stove. The rain pattered on the roof, roared for a while, then pit-pattered again.

“What is it I should tell power?” Zukovich said as he sat on his canvas swing chair. “And how do I get in touch?”

Jack Liffey smiled. Extra credit for a sense of humor. “That’s your problem. I have no agenda here.”

The young man still looked suspicious. “You’re a funny old fucker, you know that.”

There was a book on the floor beside him, and Jack Liffey glanced at it idly, recognizing the author’s name right off: M. Stanton Evans. All those indelible names from his father’s kitchen table rants—Philbrick, Skousen, Bouscaren, Bishop Fulton Sheen.

“I like stuff that’s off the map,” Jack Liffey said. “Sometimes it’s really loopy, but sometimes you learn something.”

“I like books that tell me what’s going on underneath the media bullshit,” Zook said. “I hate superior bastards lying to me and then going to eat sushi.”

“Did you grow up in Monterey Park?”

He nodded. “It was already becoming chop suey town. Man, think of your own hometown and think of it turning into a foreign country before your eyes.”

“I grew up in San Pedro, Zook. It was Yugoslav, Italian, Latino, Black, Norwegian, and Greek.
I
was the minority. A name like yours still feels like an ordinary American name to me. Roll call was Dragich, Mardesich, Zorotovich.”

“It
is
American,” he bristled.

“Say that in Kansas and see what happens.”

The boy glared for a moment. “I bet you hang out with all the tame spades.”

Jack Liffey laughed. “I hang out with a Paiute woman, son. What’s more American than that?”

“Bet she plays your tom-tom in bed.”

“Don’t do that, Zook. That’s my woman.”

“Sorry, man, really. That was uncalled for. I know better than insulting a guy’s old lady.”

Jack Liffey looked into the boy’s eyes, fresh and earnest. Was there any real hope? “Apology accepted.”

“You want a doobie, man?”

He did, but it had been over a decade since he’d smoked anything. Rain rattled on a window like fingernails. “Maybe some other time. I’ve got to go soon.” It was important to get out of there before the young man felt he was being crowded.

Wind wailed eerily in the eaves of the cabin.

“Whoa, you believe in Satan?” Zook asked, looking around.

“No.”

“Me neither, I guess.” He grinned. “But what if it’s end-times right this minute?”

“Trust me. There’s a lot to take care of before that happens. I’m going to leave you something—you can read it or not.” He brought out an old paperback of John Berger’s
Ways of Seeing
. A guy had handed it to him right after Vietnam and it had hit him like a mortar round. The book had made him rethink a lot. It was mainly about art, and the way art influenced the ways you looked at the world, and he bet it would come at Zook sideways.

“Zook, this book cuts into the lies people tell us all the time. Try the chapter about women. My card marks the place. Call me if you want to talk or if you just need a friend.”

Zook finished off his beer. He didn’t look happy. “Man, look. That book has an evil glow.” And in the bright red pulse from the mica window of the stove, the white of the Penguin cover sure did

Ideas always glow, he thought.

*

“Dad-o-mine, you’ve
got
to get a cell. I’ll give you an iPhone for Christmas. I mean it. You’re being an old fogey. Some fire department guy called
me
to leave
you
a message. I don’t know how on earth he got my number.

“The guy said his name was Walt Roski and he needed to talk to you pretty soon.” His answering machine read him the number, the same number Jack Liffey already possessed on Roski’s card in his pocket.

“Wait,” he said automatically, then realized he was only talking to a tape. He
was
an old fogey.

“Yes, I’m okay, Dad,” her voice went on, anticipating him. “College is great. My friends are great. My painting is great. Well, it’s getting better. Have you ever heard of a guy named Swami Muni? Don’t get worked up. Just asking for a friend. Get a real phone, please. Bye.” The machine stopped and whirred.

He wondered if there was any message she could have left that would have troubled him more?
Swami
Muni? He might not have worried about it at all if she hadn’t immediately and transparently resorted to her emotional blackmail. He called her back, but there was no answer, not even a message bucket. Late afternoon. In class with the phone turned off—hopefully. Or maybe on a hilltop with this swami, waiting for the chariot of the gods to come pick them up.

How had Maeve become so impulsive? Was it his genes? He’d chased her down through a lot of open-hearted leaps, but he knew he finally needed to let go a little. And he had his own problems. Like Tien.

The next recorded call was Tien’s voice. “Jackie, my great lover, I need you so bad. Why you always got a woman no good for you? I be too good.” His hackles rose and he missed a few sentences as he raged inwardly at Tien for leaving a message like this on his home phone, which Gloria might easily have monitored. His skin crawled. Of course, Tien had done it on purpose. Poking a big stick into the passing spokes of his life.

“I hear maybe my niece-girl dead. You come see me, Mr. Big and Tough. Got to be. I expect you today. No telephone. In the person. We got to talk serious.”

He was overwhelmed by a wave of tenderness for Gloria, and it felt so much like loss that he switched off the machine before retrieving the third call. He had to sit down to get himself together. Gloria had virtually ordered him to have an affair, but this wasn’t what she’d had in mind.

After a while, he picked up the phone and punched in Walt Roski’s number. He got the leave-a-message message.

“Walt, this is Jack. I guess we’re playing phone tag. Please call my home number.” He repeated the number. “It’s got a nice old-fashioned recording machine with a tape in it. I’m here or—”

A
clack
meant Roski had picked up. “Hold on, Jack, give me a moment to clear some business.”

“Sure.”

Jack Liffey listened to the steady rasp in the ether, the abrasive indifference of technology, then Roski’s voice came back. “Jack, I’m at the County Fire offices in City Terrace, a long stone’s throw from your house. I need to see you.”

“I know where it is. I’ll be there—”

“No, not at the office. After 9/11, everybody’s paranoid. You need clearance from God to get in. Let’s split the difference and meet at the mercado on First, the restaurants upstairs.
La Perla
. You know the place?”

“I could walk there if you give me fifteen minutes.”

“Come on a skateboard if you want.”

*

Thank whatever Mariachi god was in charge, the competing bands had ended their lunchtime sets and hadn’t started up again. He was on the third-floor mezzanine overlooking hundreds of shops in the mercado two floors down.

Jack Liffey glanced into the maelstrom down below—mobbed stalls of clothing, toys, shoes, CDs, and the magic potions of
botanicos
. The big-hipped waitress came and took his order for a Diet Coke and wandered off.

Before long Roski seemed to appear like magic, and sat down opposite. Jack Liffey realized for the umpteenth time that he wasn’t really much of a detective. He hadn’t even spotted Roski approaching.

“Hello, Walt. How about you tell me how the head of County Arson can’t make a call to the gate to get somebody in.”

He waved the thought away. “Let it go. I don’t trust anyone these days. We’ve got a leak. Coroner data goes out to every sheriff’s station commander and forty-six police jurisdictions. There couldn’t be any leaks in all that, right?”

“I’m a helluva lot more interested in
what
got leaked than who.”

The waitress came back with a Diet Coke and then suffered through an exacting order from Roski for any beer from Mexico that was in a glass bottle, as long as it wasn’t Dos Equis or the surfers’ favorite, Corona. He settled for an Indio.

“Your urgent news,” Jack Liffey said when she’d gone.

“Wall Street is messing with our economy.”

Jack Liffey made an unpleasant sound. “I think I’ve heard that.”

Roski took two eight-by-ten photos out of a briefcase. “We heard there might have been a gunshot wound, so once the DNA test was positive, we went back to the scene and sifted some more. And we were watched over by a shiny-shoes from D.C. who called himself Smith. Hah. He’s not my friend, I’ll tell you that.”

Roski laid out the eight-by-tens that had no need to be that large. The first was of a bullet that had mushroomed badly on impact. “A .45 caliber, a crappy garage reload that you can buy by the hundred at a swap meet in big plastic bags. Basically you use unjacketed reloads because you’re an asshole and you don’t care about degrading your weapon. And, oh yeah, you don’t want to write your name down in a gun store.”

He tapped the second photo. “This one is a piece of the frontal bone of a human skull. See the crack? They tell me it had to be a powerful blow, probably a bullet. Here’s the rub: the bullet wasn’t found under the skull. Probably in a shirt pocket, for Chrissake. When the science folks tell me the sun revolves around the earth, I believe them.” He sat back and closed his eyes.

“Stay with me.”

“You know what it means, Jack? Or
probably
means?”

“Please.”

“We got handcuffs. A smashed skull. And maybe a bullet stuffed into her clothing, who knows why. This poor kid was killed somewhere else and dragged there.”

They fell silent as Roski’s beer came. A guitarist far across the interior space began tuning up and practicing, but the sound didn’t invade their privacy. Roski seemed to want to relax, but couldn’t get very close to it. He glanced at his watch, then at Jack Liffey’s Coke. “You in AA?” he asked.

He’d told Roski most of it already, but the guy was lost in the null zone of his own troubles. “I got heavy into substances maybe fifteen years ago. I used to think I could mix it up with anything and come out on top, but it wasn’t true. I lost a lot for it.”

Roski stared into his beer. “Yeah. Iraq cost me a wife and two kids. I was in the Marine Reserves. We volunteered to be the guys they call up to protect the homeland if Canada invades.”

“Walt, I was drafted to
invade
another country. Full of small yellow people like Sabine Roh.” And Tien. “The only deal I had was being born in a country that never ever did things like that.”

Roski nodded. “Somebody better be crying in Hell.”

“You believe in Hell?”

“Of course not. What a stupid idea. Jack, I don’t think I asked you here this afternoon to talk about a bullet. I asked you because I need a friend.”

“Say what?”

“I know it’s creepy. I’m supposed to be Mr. Tough and Competent. Most firemen are really good guys. But the guys who climb to the top…” He shook his head. “I go to lunch with my counterparts and they spend half the lunchtime talking about which is the best shopping mall, or arguing whether the Burger King Whopper is better than In-n-Out. After that, the inner life of my life seems to have crashed and burned.”

A trumpet bleated across the mezzanine. Roski flinched and glanced around. “Ah, shit, that spooks me. Without calm-down drugs, I’d’ve been in orbit now. I’m a classic PTSD.”

Jack Liffey thought of Gloria hiding her inner struggles from her captain. He stuck his fist out and Roski popped it from above with his.

“Homes.” But Jack Liffey was thinking, why me? And a burning indigestion started up high in his chest.

“I could see you were a
mensch
, man.”

“Don’t go overboard.”

Roski handed across a notecard with a hand-drawn map.

“What’s this?”

“A favor. I had my staff find out where your loud South African lives. I think you told me you’d like another talk with him.”

He hadn’t told Roski any such thing, but he took the map, which looked a lot like the one he’d found in Sabine’s room. Apparently the man wanted to use him for a little free investigation. They chatted a while longer, but Roski became increasingly self-absorbed, like a high-strung ballet dancer.

“I’ve got a wife to feed,” Jack Liffey said. He didn’t really want to add, but he did: “Let’s get together soon.”

Roski thanked him with a nod. “I’ve got a parrot at home to feed.”

“Really?” Parrots seemed to Jack Liffey to have passed out of the real world into the world of Saturday morning cartoons.

“Fuck, no. I do all the squawking in my house.”

The sensation of being lost was really only a game she was playing with herself in the desert stroll. Megan Saxton knew that if she glanced back across the weeds, she’d see Hardi’s isolated house. She did turn for a moment and blinked, startled by the world’s will to confute her. No house at all. Ahead somewhere was the dangerous border, so behind her had to be the house. But where exactly was behind?