T. Parker - Laguna Heat

The hillside rose steadily before him, and as he listened he could hear no movement in the dense cluster of trees. His breathing was deep and frantic, his vision poor in the murky shadows of the eucalyptus. He could feel his heart thumping in his ribs, his head, his ears. A quirk in the shadows ahead, then the snapping of a branch. “Hey! You! Stop right there...” His attempted shout trailed off feebly into breathlessness and he started running again. As the man ahead darted into a clearing, Shephard saw him turn his head and look back. Then he lunged forward and disappeared into the trees again.

In the clearing, Shephard stopped and listened. His legs were heavy and he couldn’t seem to breathe fast enough to keep his lungs full. Silence. He waited, studying the pale trunks of the eucalyptus trees, every one of them large enough to hide a body. Then, scanning the scene in front of him, he walked slowly forward, waiting for his game to break cover. This is the place to hide, he thought. The closely bunched trees blotted out the light from the moon. Still no other sound than of his own rapid breathing. Doesn’t the sonofabitch breathe too, he wondered? Too many cigarettes. Ahead of him the trunks sprouted like a regiment of towering soldiers, each a slash of bone in the blackness. Then a quick wisp behind him, head-high; no, he thought, and began to duck, but he was just beginning when the steel slammed into the back of his head and dropped him abruptly to his knees. Take a vacation, fucker — later Shephard was sure he’d heard the man say it — take a vacation because you’re going to need it. Then the swift and wind-robbing jolt of a shoe in his stomach and his face pressing into iceplant.

The last thing he remembered was thinking how much iceplant tasted like blood.

He awoke to a well-lit acoustic ceiling. The holes shifted and swirled, the squares stretched into rectangles and back again; a Beatles tune dripped from a speaker, watered down to almost nothing. He lifted his arm and read his name off the plastic bracelet. Spelled wrong. When he tried to raise his head, it erupted with a pain so severe it overwhelmed his mind like a tsunami and sent him floating back into unconsciousness.

Sedated dreams: gray forms looming with terrible size, slow-motion horses snorting from widened nostrils, mute women with perfect bodies, fires, voices, clouds. And later, when the sedatives began to wear off, he found himself in the dreams, an onlooker in a shadowed world of murmurs and mood, like an ego-less baby seeing events around himself, trying to understand them, understanding nothing.

When he finally regained consciousness, his father and a man he didn’t recognize stood over him. Wade looked stricken. Shephard groaned, testing his pain, then propped himself up on his elbows. “Hiya, pop,” he slurred.

His father was dressed tennis, little white shorts and little white shirt. So was the man who was with him. “Take it easy, son. You’ll rip your stitches.”

“My serve. Love-fifty. Little white shoes, pop; Nikes?” His words were escaping without thought. “Get me a Scotch,” he heard himself say.

“That’s the spirit,” said Wade’s friend.

“Tommy, you remember Joe Datilla? The Surfside?”

Datilla stepped forward and smiled. He looked gray, handsome, fit. A sailboat tan and a health-spa body, Shephard thought. “Haven’t seen you in years, Tom. I was with your dad when he got the news, so I thought I’d come along. I’ll forgive you for interrupting our tennis.” Shephard tried his best to focus. Joe. Of course.

“I ’member old Joe. And the health spa — the Surfside.”

“Well...” Datilla smiled pitiably.

“It’s the ritziest sun club north of La Costa,” Shephard blurted. Wish the room would quit swimming. “I ain’t no dummy. How are ya, pop?”

“You know how I am, Tom. How are you? And what happened?”

“Someone had a party on my head, but it’s okay, I feel great. Know how hangovers make you feel profound? That’s me. One big hangover. I’m going to become a poet...”

Wade and Datilla laughed heartily, but his father stepped forward and ran his fingers across Shephard’s face. He laid back down and touched his head, getting only bandage.

“Again, Tommy. What happened?”

Shephard offered a concussive narrative. It ended abruptly when he felt exhaustion coming over him like a warm blanket. “... So that was my night. You do anything fun?” He settled back into the pillow.

“Did you get a look at him, Tom?” Datilla asked.

“How old a man?” asked Wade.

“One at a time, boys.” He closed his eyes at a sudden crack of pain. “Yes, and forty. Give or take five years. Pretty damned dark out. Bring me the phone, will ya?”

Wade put his hand on the telephone and moved it away from his son. “A boy found you in the hills,” he said. “When they brought you here, they called the department. The chief knows you’re here, so don’t worry about business right now. Just give my prayers a chance to work. Please.”

Wade the Reverend, still thinking like Wade the Cop, Shephard thought. “Welcome back to the hometown,” he said finally. “It’s changed.” He could hear Wade and Datilla chuckle, which mingled with the piped-in music and throbbed through his head.

“Won’t be so bad,” Datilla was saying now. “As soon as you’re up and around, I expect to see you out at the Surfside. Come by any time. We’ll have a drink, maybe go for a sail. You play tennis?”

“No. Could never figure out how to keep score.”

“I’ll teach you. I can think of a few ladies out there who might be intrigued by a detective.”

“Yes. I’m an intriguing man.”

“You’re just a tired, beat-up man right now,” said Wade. He stepped forward again, pressing his hand against Tom’s shoulder. “We’ll let you rest, son. Let’s have lunch just as soon as you feel up to it. I haven’t improved any as a cook, but you grew up on it, so it shouldn’t kill you now.”

“Leave that to the pros,” Shephard said.

“What’d the sonofabitch look like, anyway?” Datilla said.

“Just a big guy with curly hair and no respect for the law.”

“Well, I hope to heaven you find him.”

“Amen,” said Wade.

He was pronounced mildly concussed, but was released that afternoon to Pavlik. The crime scene investigator took Shephard to the Hotel Sebastian to get his car, driving carefully while Shephard slumped in the seat and watched Laguna Beach slide by the windows. Pavlik’s voice seemed to slip past his brain without contact, Shephard hearing only snippets. Grimes picked a good time for a nap... got Hardy there now... watched the hotel for an hour myself... got the key... when I went in, everything was the same, same crappy old place... get some rest... got the stakeout myself tonight...

The climb up the stairs to his apartment was endless, the steps somehow multiplying in front of him. He stopped halfway when he heard his neighbor’s voice booming from the doorway below.

“Hey, Shephard, wanna grind?” He turned to focus on Sal.

“Just ate, Sal.”

“What’s that shit on the back of your head, man?”

“Just a little ding.”

“You mean she closed her legs too fast.” Sal bellowed, enjoying his joke immensely.

Shephard grinned, but a jolt of pain shot through his head. “Fishing the rocks tonight?” he managed.

“Up too late, bro, I’m in the coffin after the grind.”

Sal roared a friendly insult to a woman passing on the sidewalk, and Shephard confronted his stairs for the second half of the journey.

Before he reached the porch he could hear Cal’s quiet whining coming from inside. Shephard stopped by the door and listened... a long whimper followed by another, the dog catching his breath, then starting in again. The muffled thumps of struggle, then nothing. Shephard slid his key into the lock with one hand, brought the Colt Python from his holster with the other, and stumbled through the door.