Try Darkness (23 page)

Ariel went to DeCosse and pecked his cheek. “Are we heading out now?”

“We are,” DeCosse said.

“Ah. Nice to see you again, Mr. Buchanan. You’re about to get a real treat.” She snatched her gloves and left the room.

104

“
YOU ENJOY THE
game?” DeCosse said.

“I watch it from time to time,” I said. “If Tiger’s playing.”

DeCosse had an Astroturf mat on the stern of his yacht and a bucket of golf balls. Out about a hundred yards was a buoy with a little flag on it, and a circular surface the size of a trash can lid. About fifty yards to the right, a couple of guys on a smaller boat were dropping another buoy. DeCosse’s personal golf course.

“You like this?” DeCosse said as he pulled a wedge out of his golf bag.

“The water hazard’s a little treacherous,” I said.

He laughed, then took a ball from the bucket and dropped it on the mat. He took his stance and gave the floating hole a look. Waggled the club. Whacked the ball.

The ball arced through the sea air, with a slight draw, then plopped about five feet over the target.

“Need to take a little off it,” DeCosse said. “Want to give it a try?”

“I’d just embarrass myself,” I said. “If you have a windmill to putt at, I might go for it.”

“You never get anywhere unless you try, Mr. Buchanan.”

“I try cases,” I said.

“I love the way golf focuses the mind.” He used his wedge to flip another ball from the bucket onto the mat. “It’s peaceful, contrary to what people think. If you know how to approach it.”

He hit another shot. This one clanked on the metallic surface of the buoy. The guys in the other boat clapped.

“Great shot,” I said.

“You see, if I hit a bad one, I always know there’s another shot to come. I don’t let the bad ones ruin my game. I’m always looking ahead.”

He took another shot. It hit the water. He smiled. “I’ve already forgotten that one.” He slapped the wedge on the mat. Like he was killing a bee. “Remember that old rule I gave you? When you’re in trouble, get out of trouble. The thing is to just get the ball back into play. You always have another shot coming.”

DeCosse sent another ball to the buoy and hit it. His little grounds crew applauded again.

“I’d like to see you get out of trouble,” he said to me. Then he looked over my shoulder and his face went stone cold.

I turned around.

Ariel DeCosse was strolling along the port side almost wearing a thong bikini.

If I had been a cartoon, my eyes would have popped out. They almost did anyway.

I turned around, embarrassed for Sam DeCosse. Al and a couple of the crew were all out there, and they had eyes, too.

DeCosse did not move. His jaw muscles throbbed.

I heard a splash and took it to mean Ariel had gone for a dip.

Sam DeCosse snapped the club across his knee. Then threw the pieces into the water.

“Come with me,” he ordered.

105

BACK IN THE
lounge he offered me a drink. I said no thanks. He poured himself one. He said, “You tried to talk to my son.” Direct and sharp, like he expected answers fast.

“Sure,” I said.

“Why?”

“Thought he might be able to help me.”

“How?”

“With information.”

“What kind of information?”

“That’s between him and me, isn’t it?”

DeCosse shook his head. “When it comes to my family, I take an interest in everything.”

“Good policy.”

“This’ll be a short meeting. Shorter still if you just tell me what you’ve got in mind.”

“Mind?”

“You think you’re going to make some trouble here? Interfere? Why? What good’s it going to do you?”

“I don’t care about my good.”

“What do you care about?”

Good question. I wasn’t really sure anymore, except that something in my gut had to get some people down a peg, and others up. DeCosse’s son had to come down. Legally, but certainly.

“Your son is planning on developing a piece of land in the Santa Susana Mountains,” I said.

DeCosse tensed. I’d scored on him. A guy who prided himself in never showing his cards had flinched.

“Not bad,” he said. “The currency of negotiation is information. You have it, somehow. I don’t know how, but now it’s on the table. We have to deal with it.”

“What’s so secret about this?” I asked. “And what’s so hard about letting tenants have their rights?”

“Mr. Buchanan, you need to drop this whole line about rights. That doesn’t even figure into it. Rights have no value whatsoever. Nobody believes in rights. They never did. The powder heads who wrote it into the Constitution, they owned slaves. They allowed rights only up to the point of their bottom line. It’s still the same, so drop the pose and tell me how much money it’s going to take to make you go away.”

If this had been a reality show, I’d be a star. A guy who actually got Sam DeCosse to make an open-ended offer. This was a place unoccupied by anyone on the planet, as far as I knew.

Felt great. I was all powerful.

For about ten seconds.

“I don’t need any money,” I said. “But there’s a girl, the daughter of the woman murdered at the Lindbrook. Maybe you could see your way to donating a significant amount in trust, for her education and all.”

“Interesting,” he said. “Anything else?”

“I still want to know who killed the woman.”

DeCosse didn’t flinch. He took a sip of his bourbon. He swirled the glass a little, then said, “That’s a police matter.”

“It’s a family matter.”

“Well, then, I hope you find out who did it.”

“Any ideas?”

Sam DeCosse sighed. “Mr. Buchanan, you’re a sharp guy, and I admire sharpness. I think your best days are ahead of you.” He put his drink on the table. “But if you go around making false accusations, that doesn’t help anybody.”

“I haven’t made any accusations.”

“Oh, come on, you want to know if I had something to do with this woman’s death, right?”

I swallowed. My Adam’s apple felt like a volleyball.

“You know,” DeCosse said, “my favorite show when I was a kid was
Perry Mason.
Ever watch
Perry Mason
?”

“I’ve seen a few of them.”

“Raymond Burr. The greatest! And at the end of every show, he’d get some poor sap to break down on the witness stand and confess to the murder. I thought for a long time about becoming a lawyer, because I wanted to be able to do that. But then I found out that never happened in real life. It was fiction, but fun fiction. What you’re suggesting now is fiction, but I don’t find it fun.”

“So no tearful confession?”

DeCosse laughed. “You know, I really like you. You can be irritating, but I like you. And if you’ll just think before you speak, I’ll like you even more. I have no motive to do some poor woman harm just because she wanted to stay in one of our hotels. What would that possibly accomplish?”

“Did you know this woman at all?”

“Of course not. I don’t want anything to do with the day-to-day down there. I leave that to others.”

“Your son?”

“And that’s another thing. I don’t like you sticking your nose through his fence. I would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t interfere with things anymore. See, we have family matters, too. Just take some money and run.”

“I’ll have to think about it,” I said.

“Well, isn’t that just what I’ve been saying? Thinking is a good thing.” DeCosse looked at his watch. “And since we’re just about to head back, I’d like to help focus your thoughts.”

106

DECOSSE CALLED SOMEONE
on his cell phone, and a minute later Dev the bodyguard was in the room with us.

“You know Dev,” DeCosse said.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Hi.”

DeCosse asked Dev to close the door.

“Now, it’s just the three of us,” DeCosse said. “What we say here stays here. Agreed?”

I looked at Dev, who was looking at me and not responding to the question. So I shrugged.

DeCosse said, “Dev, give him the information.”

Dev, with a cat smile on his face, came over to me and plowed a fist into my solar plexus.

It was a pile driver.

All air left me. I collapsed to the floor. Sparkly lights glittered behind my eyes.

I don’t know how long I was on the floor, but they stood by until my breathing normalized. They didn’t say anything or move. Just waited until I got to my feet.

“He’s pretty good,” I said. “When a guy’s not ready.”

“And I hope that helps you to think this all through,” DeCosse said.

My intestines were doing a Samoan fire dance. I put my left hand on my stomach. With the back of my right I smacked Dev across the face. Hard.

I loved the look in his eyes. Shock. A moment of confusion. Then anger.

DeCosse put a hand on Dev’s chest to keep him from doing what he wanted to do.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “What happens here stays here.”

“What you lack in brains,” DeCosse said, “you make up for in moxie. I like that. But moxie will get you hurt.”

“Let me,” Dev said through his teeth.

DeCosse said, “You can go, Dev.”

With obvious reluctance, Dev walked out.

DeCosse said, “You showed me something, Mr. Buchanan. Up top, when my wife made her . . . appearance, you didn’t gawk. You turned around. I think that was out of respect.”

I said nothing.

“Your instincts are good. Listen to them.”

Hand on my gut, I said, “Take me back.”

“We’re on our way.”

107

THE TRIP BACK
was agony and was supposed to be. My stomach was inside out, like a gym sock taken off fast. Dev was deadly. He knew exactly where to hit to do enough damage to get the message across. And leave the rest of me for another day.

One of the other “stewards” was stationed in the room. I was collapsed on a leather chair.

At some point Al came in, looking sheepish. He told the steward to leave us alone for a minute. The guy looked happy to leave.

“You okay?” Al said.

“What do you want?” I said.

“Ty, I’m sorry.”

“Save it.”

“This is not something I approve of.”

I felt sorry for him. “Al, do you know what a whore is?”

“Ty—”

“Do you?”

“Why are you doing this? You were always a pig head, but you could be talked to. You could be reasoned with.”

“Al, I’d be real glad if you never talked to me again. Unless it’s official. Now kindly get out of my face.”

They dropped me on the dock and offered me a ride back. I said no and called a cab. That was a ride worth paying for.

108

WHEN I GOT
back to St. Monica’s it was almost evening and I was in a foul mood. As I made my way to my trailer, bad waking dreams kept kicking my can.

When I was a kid I had a hot temper. Didn’t like getting hit. When I was nine or so I pounded the snot out of kid bigger than me after he thought he could intimidate me with a punch to the face. I went to a different place that day at school. I surprised myself as much as the kid, whose name was Donny.

Before it was over I had him on the ground and was sitting on his chest. I bloodied his nose—broke it, I found out later—and puffed both his eyes. My friend Yale Hutchison said Donny was screaming, but I don’t remember that. The pulse hammering my ears kept all other sound out.

The beating caused a little scandal for a while. I was called in with my father and there was talk of a lawsuit by Donny’s parents. But in the end I was let off with a suspension.

When the dust died down my dad took me on a fishing trip, and when we were good and quiet he told me that he almost killed a boy once when he was thirteen. He called it the Buchanan temper and said it came from his grandfather and just got passed down. And if you didn’t learn to deal with it, you would end up in prison and there they’d give you the same treatment every day.

After he was killed I told myself I’d do everything I could to make him proud of me. And I did work hard at it, real hard.

But the Buchanan temper rose from the grave when Dev hit me.

And I wasn’t caring if it came back. That was the scary part.

That was my wonderful frame of mind when I got to the trailer. Father Bob was in his priest clothes, coming out of his own trailer. Getting ready for mass or prayers or something. I didn’t care.

“Ty, you look all in,” he said. “Anything wrong?”

“The world’s my oyster.”

He laughed. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“Why don’t you go pray or something?” I reached for the handle of the door. A fresh pain froze my arm for a minute.

“Hey.” Father Bob came to me. “What’s up, my friend?”

“Nothing.”

“Talk to me.”

“Don’t you have to go hear some confessions or something?”

“It might not hurt for you to . . .”

I grabbed my stomach.

“Hey, what happened?” Father Bob said. “Come in and tell me.”

So we went into his trailer and I told him. The whole deal. DeCosse and Dev and the punch. And my desire to put serious hurt on both of them.

109

FATHER BOB WAS
silent for a long time. Finally, he said, “You need to learn how to protect yourself better.”

“I thought you only dispensed spiritual advice,” I said.

“You need that, too. But you’re also running around getting involved with bad people. You’re out on the street. People are going to try to mess you up, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to try to hurt me? See what happens?”

I looked at the face of true religion and couldn’t believe he just said that. “Is that your bad self talking?”

“Come on. Come at me.”

“Maybe you could describe it to me instead.”

“Good answer,” he said. “I don’t want to break any of your small bones.”

“Got to tell you,” I said, “I wouldn’t have pegged you for talk about breaking bones.”

“Let me tell you a little story,” Father Bob said. “Story of a black kid in Hawthorne whose daddy got shot by a white cop who thought he was going for a gun when all he was doing was trying to get the ID that showed he was employed as custodian for L.A. Unified. Then his mama decided life was too much to take, and she did to herself what the white cop did to the boy’s daddy. The boy gets shipped off to the archipelago known as Los Angeles County foster care. After four horrendous experiences he’s placed with a Catholic family. Latino. By this time the boy was headed for a life of crime and gangs. He was sixteen now, ripe for the picking, living out in Compton. He had to learn to survive on the street, and he did.”