The Good Guy (3 page)

Four

T
he woman marked for death lived in a modest
bungalow in the hills of Laguna Beach, on a street that lacked a money view but that was being gentrified nonetheless. Compared to the aging structures, the land under them had such value that every house sold would be torn down regardless of its condition and its charm, to make way for a larger residence.

Southern California was shedding all its yesterdays. When the future proved to be a cruel place, no evidence of a better past would exist, and therefore the loss would be less painful.

The small white house, huddled under tall eucalyptuses, had plenty of charm, but to Tim the place looked embattled, more bunker than bungalow.

Lamplight warmed the windows. Sheer curtains made mysteries of the rooms beyond.

He parked his Ford Explorer across the street from—and four doors north of—Linda Paquette’s property, at another house.

Tim knew this place: three years old, in the Craftsman style, with stacked stone and cedar siding. He had been the head mason on the job.

The walkway was random flagstone bordered by a double row of three-inch-square cobbles. Tim found this combination unattractive; but he had executed it with care and precision.

Owners of three-million-dollar homes seldom ask masons for design advice. Architects never do.

He pressed the doorbell once and stood listening to the faint susurration of the palm trees.

The offshore flow was less a breeze than a premonition of a breeze. The mild May night breathed as shallowly as an anesthetized patient waiting for the surgeon.

The porch light came on, the door opened, and Max Jabowski said, “Timothy, old bear! What a surprise.”

If spirit could be weighed and measured, Max would have proved to be bigger than his house.

“Come in, come in.”

“I don’t want to intrude,” Tim said.

“Nonsense. How could you intrude in a place you built?”

Having clasped Tim’s shoulder, Max seemed to transfer him from porch to foyer by some power of levitation.

“I only need a minute of your time, sir.”

“Can I get you a beer, something?”

“No, thank you, I’m all right. It’s about a neighbor of yours.”

“I know them all, this block and the next. I’m president of our Neighborhood Watch.”

Tim had expected as much.

“Coffee? I have one of those machines that makes it a cup at a time, anything from cappuccino to plain old plain old.”

“No, really, but that’s very kind, sir. She lives at fourteen twenty-five, the bungalow among the eucalyptuses.”

“Linda Paquette. I didn’t know she was going to build. She seems like a solid person. I think you’d enjoy working with her.”

“Do you know her husband, what he does?”

“She isn’t married. She lives there alone.”

“So she’s divorced?”

“Not that I’m aware. Is she going to tear down or remodel?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Tim said. “It’s a personal matter. I was hoping you’d speak to her about me, let her know I’m okay.”

The bushy eyebrows rose, and the rubbery lips stretched into an arc of delight. “I’ve been a lot of things, but never before a matchmaker.”

Although he should have foreseen this interpretation of his questions, Tim was surprised by it. He hadn’t dated anyone in a long time. He had assumed that he’d lost the telltale glint of eye and had stopped producing whatever subtle pheromones might have allowed him to be mistaken for a man still in the game.

“No, no. It’s not that.”

“She’s easy on the eyes,” said Max.

“Truly, it’s not that. I don’t know her, she doesn’t know me, but we have a…mutual acquaintance. I have some news about him. I think she’ll want to know it.”

The rubbery smile loosened only a little. Max didn’t want to let go of the image of himself as a facilitator of true romance.

Everyone, Tim thought, had seen too many movies. They believed that a meet-cute relationship awaited every good heart. Because of movies, they believed a lot of other improbable things, as well, some of them dangerous.

“It’s a sad business,” Tim said. “Some depressing news.”

“About your mutual acquaintance.”

“Yes. He’s not a well man.”

This could not be counted as a lie. The skydiver was not physically ill, but his mental condition was suspect; and his moral health had fallen to disease.

Consideration of death relaxed all the delight out of Max Jabowski’s smile. His mouth shrank to a grim shape, and he nodded.

Tim expected to be asked the name of the mutual acquaintance. He would have had to say that he didn’t want to provide it for fear of alarming the woman before he could be at her side to comfort her.

The fuller truth was that he had no name to give.

Max did not ask for a name, sparing Tim from resorting to that deception. Bushy brows beetling now over solemn eyes, he once more offered coffee, and then went away to call the woman.

The coffered ceiling and wood-paneled walls of the foyer were dark, and the limestone floor was so light, by contrast, that the support it provided seemed illusory, as if he might at any moment fall through it like a man stepping out of a plane in flight.

Two small chairs flanked a console, above which hung a mirror.

He did not look at his reflection. If he met his eyes, he would see the hard truth from which he preferred to remain diverted.

Directly met, his gaze would tell him what was coming. It was the same thing that was always coming toward him, that always would be, as long as he was alive.

He needed to prepare for it. He did not need, however, to dwell on it.

From elsewhere in the house arose Max’s muted voice as he spoke on the phone.

Here at the center of the foyer, Tim stood straight, and felt as if he were suspended from the dark ceiling, like a clapper in a bell, with empty air below him, in silent anticipation of a sudden tolling.

Max returned and said, “She’s curious. I didn’t say much, just vouched for you.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“It isn’t any bother, but it is kind of peculiar.”

“Yes, it is. I know.”

“Why didn’t your friend call Linda and vouch for you himself? He wouldn’t have to tell her why he’s sending you around—the bad news.”

“He’s very ill and very confused,” said Tim. “He knows the right thing to do, but he doesn’t any longer know how to do it.”

“That’s maybe the thing I fear the most,” said Max. “The mind going, the loss of control.”

“It’s life,” Tim said. “We all get through it.”

They shook hands, and Max walked him out onto the porch. “She’s a nice woman. I hope this won’t be too painful.”

“I’ll do my best for her,” Tim said.

He returned to his Explorer and drove to Linda Paquette’s bungalow.

The herringbone brick of the front walkway had been laid on a bed of sand. The air was fragrant with eucalyptus essence, and dry leaves crunched underfoot.

Step by step, urgency overcame him. Time seemed to quicken, and he sensed trouble coming sooner rather than later.

As he climbed the front steps, the door opened, and she greeted him. “Are you Tim?”

“Yes. Ms. Paquette?”

“Call me Linda.”

In the porch light, her eyes were Egyptian green.

She said, “Your mama must have had a hard nine months carrying all of you around.”

“I was smaller then.”

Stepping back from the door, she said, “Duck your head and come on in.”

He crossed the threshold, and after that nothing was ever the same for him.

Five

G
olden honey poured wall to wall, a wood floor
so lustrous and warm that the humble living room appeared spacious, quietly grand.

Built in the 1930s, the bungalow had either been meticulously maintained or restored. The small fireplace and flanking wall sconces were simple but elegant examples of Art Deco style.

The glossy white tongue-and-groove ceiling lowered over Tim, but not unpleasantly. The place felt cozy instead of claustrophobic.

Linda had a lot of books. With one exception, their spines were the only art in the room, an abstract tapestry of words and colors.

The exception was a six-by-four-foot image of a television with a blank gray screen.

“Modern art baffles me,” Tim said.

“That’s not art. I had it done at a photo shop. To remind me why I don’t own a TV.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because life is too short.”

Tim gave the photo a chance, then said, “I don’t understand.”

“Eventually you will. A head as big as yours has to have some brains in it.”

He wasn’t sure if her manner indicated a breezy kind of charm or a flippancy bordering on rudeness.

Or she might be a little screwy. Lots of people were these days.

“Linda, the reason I’m here—”

“Come along. I’m working in the kitchen.” Leading him across the living room, she said over her shoulder, “Max assured me you’re not the type to stab me in the back and rape my corpse.”

“I ask him to vouch for me, and that’s what he tells you?”

As he followed her along a hallway, she said, “He told me you were a talented mason and an honest man. I had to squeeze the rest of it out of him. He really didn’t want to commit to an opinion about your possible homicidal and necrophilic tendencies.”

A car was parked in the kitchen.

The wall between the kitchen and the two-car garage had been removed. The wood floor had been extended throughout the garage, as had the glossy white tongue-and-groove ceiling.

Three precisely focused pin spots showcased a black 1939 Ford.

“Your kitchen is in the garage,” he said.

“No, no. My garage is in my kitchen.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Huge. I’m having coffee. You want some? Cream? Sugar?”

“Black, please. Why is your car in your kitchen?”

“I like to look at it while I’m eating. Isn’t it beautiful? The 1939 Ford coupe is the most beautiful car ever made.”

“I’m not going to argue for the Pinto.”

Pouring coffee into a mug, she said, “It’s not a classic. It’s a hot rod. Chopped, channeled, fully sparkled out with cool details.”

“You worked on it yourself?”

“Some. Mostly a guy up in Sacramento, he’s a genius at this.”

“Had to cost a bunch.”

She served the coffee. “Should I be saving for the future?”

“What future did you have in mind?”

“If I could answer that, maybe I’d open a savings account.”

His mug had a ceramic parrot for a handle, and bore the words
BALBOA ISLAND
. It looked old, like a souvenir from the 1930s.

Her mug was doubly a mug, in that it was also a ceramic head of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt biting on his famous cigarette holder.

She moved to the ’39 Ford. “This is what I live for.”

“You live for a car?”

“It’s a hope machine. Or a time machine that takes you back to an age when people found it easier to hope.”

On the floor, on a drip pan, stood a bottle of chrome polish and a few rags. The bumpers, grill, and trim glimmered like quicksilver.

She opened the driver’s door and, with her coffee, got behind the steering wheel. “Let’s go for a ride.”

“I really need to talk to you about something.”

“A virtual ride. Just a mind trip.”

When she pulled the door shut, Tim went around the coupe and got in through the passenger’s door.

Because of the chopped roof, headroom was inadequate for a tall man. Tim slid down in his seat, holding the parrot mug in both hands.

In that cramped interior, he still loomed over the woman as though she were an elf and he a troll.

Instead of mohair upholstery, common to the 1930s, he sat on black leather. Gauges gleamed in a checked-steel dashboard billet.

Beyond the windshield lay the kitchen. Surreal.

The keys were in the ignition, but Linda didn’t switch on the engine for this virtual ride. Maybe when her mug was empty, she would fire up the Ford and drive over to the coffee brewer near the oven.

She smiled at him. “Isn’t this nice?”

“It’s like being at a drive-in theater, watching a movie about a kitchen.”

“The drive-in theaters have been gone for years. Don’t you think that’s like tearing down the Colosseum in Rome to build a mall?”

“Maybe not entirely like.”

“Yeah, you’re right. There never was a drive-in theater where they fed Christians to lions. So what did you want to see me about?”

The coffee was excellent. He sipped it, blew on it, and sipped some more, wondering how best to explain his mission.

Crunching through dry eucalyptus leaves on the front walk, he had known how he would tell her. When he met her, however, she was different from anyone he expected. His planned approach seemed wrong.

He knew little about Linda Paquette, but he sensed that she did not need to have her hand held while receiving bad news, that in fact too much concern might strike her as condescension.

Opting for directness, he said, “Somebody wants you dead.”

She smiled again. “What’s the gag?”

“He’s paying twenty thousand to get it done.”

She remained puzzled. “Dead in what sense?”

“Dead in the sense of shot in the head, dead forever.”

Succinctly, he told her about the events at the tavern: first being mistaken for the killer, then being mistaken for the man hiring the killer, then discovering that the killer was a cop.

She listened open-mouthed at first, but her astonishment faded rapidly. Her green eyes clouded, as if his words stirred long-settled sediment in those previously limpid pools.

When Tim finished, the woman sat in silence, sipping coffee, staring through the windshield.

He waited, but finally grew uneasy. “You do believe me?”

“I’ve known a lot of liars. You don’t sound like any of them.”

The pin spots, in which the car gleamed but also darkled, did not much brighten the interior. Though her face was softly shadowed, her eyes found light and gave it back.

He said, “You don’t seem surprised by what I’ve told you.”

“No.”

“So…then you know who he is, the one who wants you dead?”

“Not a clue.”

“An ex-husband? A boyfriend?”

“I’ve never been married. No boyfriend at the moment, and I never did have a crazy one.”

“A dispute with someone at work?”

“I’m self-employed. I work at home.”

“What do you do?”

“I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately,” she said. “What did this guy look like, the one who gave you the money?”

The description didn’t electrify her. She shook her head.

Tim said, “He has a dog named Larry. He once went sky-diving with the dog. He had a brother named Larry, died at sixteen.”

“A guy capable of naming his dog after his dead brother—I’d know who he was even if he’d never told me about Larry or Larry.”

This was not playing out in any way that Tim had imagined it might. “But the skydiver can’t be a stranger.”

“Why not?”

“Because he wants you dead.”

“People are killed by strangers all the time.”

“But nobody
hires
someone to kill a perfect stranger.” He fished the folded photograph from his shirt pocket. “Where did he get this?”

“It’s my driver’s-license picture.”

“So he’s someone with access to the DMV digital-photo files.”

She returned the photograph. Tim put it in his shirt pocket again before he realized that it belonged to her more than to him.

He said, “You don’t know anyone who’d want you dead—yet you aren’t surprised.”

“There are people who want
everybody
dead. When you get over being surprised about that, you have a high amazement threshold.”

Direct, intense, her green gaze seemed to fillet his serried thoughts and to fold them aside like layers of dissected tissue, yet somehow it was an inviting rather than a cold stare.

“I’m curious,” she said, “about the way you’ve handled this.”

Taking her comment as disapproval or suspicion, he said, “I’m not aware of any other options.”

“You could have kept the ten thousand for yourself.”

“Somebody would have come looking for me.”

“Maybe not. Now…for sure someone will. You could have just passed my photo to the killer, with the money, and done a fade, got out of the way and let things unfold as they would have done if you’d never been there.”

“And then…where would I go?”

“To dinner. To a movie. Home to bed.”

“Is that what you’d have done?” he asked.

“I don’t interest me. You interest me.”

“I’m not an interesting guy.”

“Not the way you present yourself, no. What you’re hiding is what makes you interesting.”

“I’ve told you everything.”

“About what happened in the bar. But…about you?”

The rearview mirror was angled toward him. He had avoided his eyes by meeting hers. Now he looked at his narrow reflection, and at once away, down at the ceramic parrot choked in his right hand.

“My coffee’s cold,” he said.

“Mine, too. When the killer left the tavern, you could have called the police.”

“Not after I saw he was a cop.”

“The tavern’s in Huntington Beach. I’m in Laguna Beach. He’s a cop in a different jurisdiction.”

“I don’t know his jurisdiction. The car was an unmarked sedan. He could be a Laguna Beach cop for all I know.”

“So. Now what, Tim?”

He needed to look at her and he dreaded looking at her, and he didn’t know why or how, within minutes of their meeting, she should have become the focus of either need or dread. He had never felt like this before, and although a thousand songs and movies had programmed him to call it love, he knew it wasn’t love. He wasn’t a man who fell in love at first sight. Besides, love didn’t have such an element of mortal terror as was a part of this feeling.

He said, “The only evidence I have to give the cops is the photo of you, but that’s no evidence at all.”

“The license number of the unmarked sedan,” she reminded him.

“That’s not evidence. It’s just a lead. I know someone who might be able to trace it for me and get me the driver’s name. Someone I can trust.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll figure something.”

Her gaze, which had not turned from him, had the gravitational force of twin moons, and inevitably the tide of his attention was pulled toward her.

Eye to eye again with her, he told himself to remember this moment, this tightening knot of terror that was also a loosening knot of wild exaltation, for when he realized the name for it, he would understand why he was suddenly walking out of the life he had known—and had sought—into a new life that he could not know and that he might come desperately to regret.

“You should leave this house tonight,” he said. “Stay somewhere you’ve never been before. Not with a friend or relative.”

“You think the killer’s coming?”

“Tomorrow, the next day, sooner or later, when he and the guy who hired him realize what happened.”

She didn’t appear to be afraid. “All right,” she said.

Her equanimity perplexed him.

His cell phone rang.

After Linda took his coffee mug, he answered the call.

Liam Rooney said, “He was just here, asking who was the big guy on the last stool.”

“Already. Damn. I figured a day or two. Was it the first or second guy?”

“The second. I took a closer look at him this time. Tim, he’s a freak. He’s a shark in shoes.”

Tim remembered the killer’s persistent dreamy smile, the dilated eyes hungry for light.

“What’s going on?” Liam asked.

“It’s about a woman,” Tim said, as he had said before. “I’ll take care of it.”

In retrospect, the killer had realized that something about the encounter in the tavern had not been right. He had probably called a contact number for the skydiver.

Through the windshield, the kitchen looked warm and cozy. On a wall hung a rack of cutlery.

“You can’t freeze me out like this,” said Rooney.

“I’m not thinking about you,” Tim said, opening the door and getting out of the coupe. “I’m thinking about Michelle. Keep your neck out of this—for her.”

Carrying both coffee mugs, Linda exited the Ford from the driver’s door.

“Exactly how long ago did the guy leave?” Tim asked Rooney.

“I waited maybe five minutes before calling you—in case he might come back and see me on the phone, and wonder. He looks like a guy who always puts two and two together.”

“Gotta go,” Tim said, pressed
END
, and pocketed the phone.

As Linda took the mugs to the sink, Tim selected a knife from the wall rack. He passed over the butcher knife for a shorter and pointier blade.

The Pacific Coast Highway offered the most direct route from the Lamplighter Tavern to this street in Laguna Beach. Even on a Monday evening, traffic could be unpredictable. Door to door, the trip might take forty minutes.

In addition to a detachable emergency beacon, maybe the unmarked sedan had a siren. In the last few miles of approach, the siren would not be used; they would never hear the killer coming.

Turning away from the sink, Linda saw the knife in Tim’s fist. She did not misinterpret the moment or need an explanation.

She said, “How long do we have?”

“Can you pack a suitcase in five minutes?”

“Quicker.”

“Do it.”

She glanced at the ’39 Ford.

“It’s too attention-getting,” Tim said. “You should leave it.”

“It’s my only car.”

“I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

Her green gaze was as sharp as a shard of bottle glass. “What’s in this for you? Now you’ve told me, you could split.”