Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“Thank you for your honesty, Larry,” I said. “I’m sure it was difficult for you to come forward.”

“Pffh.” Uttered with an eye roll as if coming clean were no big deal.

I said, “A couple of people think you might have been sleeping in the backyard here.”

“That’s bullshit,” he said with a smirk. “Why would I do that? You think I’m homeless?”

“I don’t know what to think,” I said.

“The thing is, I come by now and then to water the garden,” he said. “That old Jap gardener only shows up maybe once a week. If it was left to him, the whole yard woulda dried up and died a long time ago.”

“How in the world did that come about?”

He pointed at his chest. “You mean, me watering the place?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, yeah, well, see.” His face colored. “I was always curious, you know? I mean about what it was like back there. I used to hear your family out in the yard all the time, and I always wondered what it was like on your side of the fence. So when I heard no one was home here, I just came in to take a peek.”

“You could hear us?” I asked. “I don’t remember that we were especially noisy. Where were you that you could hear us?”

“That’s the thing of it,” he said. “I kind of made myself comfortable in the bushes where I was tonight and sort of listened.”

“To my family?” Creepy, I thought. But he didn’t seem to think it was especially strange. “Because Isabelle Martin paid you to?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “But that’s how it got started. One day, you guys were eating dinner outside, the way you did. I was just hanging out in the bushes, minding my own business, when she showed up. Scared the shit out of her when she stepped on me.”

Feeling absolutely nonplussed, I looked over at Jean-Paul. He seemed thoroughly puzzled, but fascinated as well.

“Why?” I asked Larry.

“You all seemed so normal,” he said. “I only wanted to know what that was like. You know, being normal.”

“And Isabelle gave you an excuse to keep spying on us,” I said.

“Not an excuse, exactly,” he said. “When she caught me, she promised that she would tell on me unless I wrote to her about you. She scared the shit out of me, too.”

“Dear God.”

“Yeah. But what I told you already, that’s only part of it.” He looked around, his glance shifting from Rafael to Jean-Paul. “I know you, Maggie. Or I used to. We could talk about it, you and me. But I don’t know these guys.”

“They’re my friends.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck who they are; I don’t know them.” He brushed his hand across his balding pate where he once had a pompadour and finally I recognized the old Larry. The punk. The lost boy. The bully. He checked again on Rafael and began to rise from his chair. “If you want to hear what I have to tell you, lose the friends.”

Mr. Sato was right, I am nosy as hell. I wanted to know the rest of what he had to say, but I didn’t want to be alone with him, not when he was so agitated. Clearly, Larry wanted to be the one calling the shots. There was a chance, I thought, that if I could keep him talking he would change his mind and open up.

I asked, “How long did you spy on me?”

“Couple o’ years.” He stayed on the edge of his seat, poised to go. “Until that day-”

“Until the fight?”

“That day, anyway.”

“Beto’s mom died that day,” I said, watching his face. When he nodded, I asked, “Is that what you want to talk about?”

“Something like that.” He stood abruptly. “When you’re free to talk-just you-let me know.”

“You know where to find me,” I said.

“Yeah.” He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt back up over his head and started toward the door. Rafael stepped aside; the man was not a prisoner.

“Do you need a ride anywhere?” I asked, hoping to find out where he was staying at least; Father John did not know.

“Who, me?” He had a sardonic grin. “You offering me a ride in that hearse you drove up in?”

That wasn’t my offer to make. I turned to Jean-Paul.

“Certainly,” Jean-Paul told him. “Just tell Rafael where you wish to go.”

“S’okay,” Larry said. “I have wheels.”

We followed him to the door.

“Larry,” I said as I threw the bolts. “Next time you see me, don’t rabbit.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” He paused in the open door to zip up his sweatshirt. “The thing is, I’ve caught you on TV a couple times, but I haven’t seen you in person since way back. So the other day when I saw you in the yard, you know without all that TV makeup crap on, saw just you , I freaked. I mean, I really lost it.”

“Why?”

“Because you look so damn much like that Miss Martin. And I know she’s dead.”

He stepped outside. With his head hunched low, he checked for enemies, and quickly walked away into the night.

“Looks to me like a string of substance abuse-related offenses.” Sergeant Richard Longshore, an old friend who works in the Homicide Bureau of the L.A. County Sheriffs, read to me from Larry Nordquist’s rap sheet. I called him first thing Saturday morning, while Jean-Paul was in the shower, and asked him to find out who I was dealing with before I tried to shake the rest of the story out of Larry.

“Petty theft, shoplifting from a liquor store, public nuisance-urinating. He did some weekends in custody for drunk-and-disorderly; looks like he’s a scrapper when he has a bag on. There are some possession and possession-for-sale charges that got him county jail time, but he always bounced out early because of overcrowding. We have DUI, DUI, DUI, driving on a suspended license while under the influence. Solicitation, public intoxication.”

“Solicitation?” I said.

“Earned a buck or two on his knees to buy drugs,” Rich said. “He’s a problem child, Maggie, but it was all petty crap until he went down for aggravated burglary. Because he took a firearm to that party he drew three years at Soledad and his first strike. The firearm enhancement put him in the bigs, so when he was charged with manslaughter-couple of drunks got into a fight and one died-he drew a full five years as guest of the state, and strike two.”

“Maybe going away for a while was good for him,” I said. “Gave him a chance to dry out, got him into a twelve-step program.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” he said. “And take care. If he draws one more strike, he goes down for a long, long time. Guys in his position can get pretty desperate if they have something they need to cover up. And it sounds like maybe your boy does.”

“Did you find anything about Ennis Jones, the man who was once accused of the Bartolini murder?”

“Pretty much what you thought I would,” he said. “He pulled fifteen-to-life on two counts of rape, one of lying-in-wait. Served five before he was sent to a sex aversion program at Atascadero. Died six months later in an altercation with another prisoner, also a convicted sex offender. End of his story.”

Jean-Paul came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and began dressing in work clothes: old jeans and a T-shirt.

“Thanks, Rich,” I said.

“Maggie?” Rich said. “Don’t try talking to the Nordquist guy alone, all right?”

“He said that what he has to say is for my ears only.”

“Too damn bad,” Rich said. “Unless you want your family to be doing some sad singing and slow walking, you don’t go in with the guy alone. Got it?”

“Yessir,” I said, laughing. “Thank you. You’ve been a big help.”

He offered his usual sign-off, “Watch six,” meaning I should guard my rear.