T. Parker - Laguna Heat

There was a light on at Tim’s house too, a feeble glow from the living room.

As the car crunched across Algernon’s driveway, the sound of the tires, the tall shadows of the eucalyptus, and the sight of Tim’s ranch house brought all the grim events of last Monday back to Shephard. Six days, he thought: two murders, no suspect in custody, no motive. He could see Jane’s father sprawled in the dust with a rock dividing his face, hear the mockingbird chattering away above him. And as he stepped from the car Shephard smelled smoke — the real thing, he thought — and with a sudden lurch of fear, searched the smell for something human.

The porch boards bent and creaked as he moved to a front window. Inside, the fireplace was alive with flames that cast an orange glow on the room. She sat on the floor facing the fire, her back to him, and a stack of cardboard filing cabinets beside her. She was wearing a blouse and jeans, and Shephard could see her hair held again by chopsticks, dark bangs curling across her forehead.

He knocked quietly on the door, and called out. A moment later she cracked it, studying him through the protective sliver, then pushed it open wide. He noted the puffiness of her eyes, the tissue in her hand. “You scared the hell out of me,” she said, closing the door behind him.

“Sorry. I saw the light.”

She tossed a sofa pillow in front of the fireplace, motioned to it, then sat back down. Shephard saw a stack of papers on the floor, documents of some kind, and bills.

“Little warm tonight for a fire, isn’t it?” he asked.

“I’ve been freezing all day. Freezing in the middle of a hot Laguna August.” She picked up a pile of papers, then plopped them back down. “One thing I can say for my father is he was organized. I think he kept everything in these files. I mean, he’s got canceled checks to the phone company going back ten years. Billings from newspapers, all his feed and tack receipts, tickets from Christmas presents. Anyway, I guess I’ll throw them away.”

Shephard watched the flame shadows playing across Jane’s face. There was a little pile of wadded tissue beside her. He unfolded the Identikit sketch and handed it to her. She stared at it, looked blankly at Shephard, then folded it back up and put it in a file folder. “You’ve got his organized blood,” he said.

“Funny, you go back and look again at somebody who was always there, and they’re different. I never realized it, but dad must have spent everything he had when mom was dying. It was a long decay, you know. Cancer in the lips, then the tongue, then down to the throat. It must have been awful.” Jane tapped a short stack of papers. “I added it up, from curiosity. Just under forty thousand dollars to try to beat that cancer.”

“Sounds like a million might not have been enough to help,” he said.

Jane shrugged. “Can’t put a price on a life. You say dad had almost a thousand dollars forced into him before he died. I’ve been thinking about that. Seems to me, it was payment offered. Trying to save his own life with a little money. And whoever killed him wouldn’t take it. Would rather have tortured him and humiliated him with it.” A big tear rolled down Jane’s cheek; Shephard watched her dab it away with a fresh Kleenex. “That seems an awfully cruel thing to do.”

Shephard nodded, thinking of Hope Creeley as she watched her own eyelids coming off. “And unnecessary.”

“Unnecessary? A policeman would say it like that, I suppose.”

Jane tossed the tissue into the fire, raised up her knees and rested her chin on them. Shephard moved closer and put his arm around her, rubbing her back with his fingers. The fire popped, and he heard the cars heading out the canyon road, tourists from the art festivals returning inland. He was close enough to smell the shampoo in her hair; he dipped his nose to it, taking in the freshness. Tocopheral acetate? “I’ve been thinking of you,” he said. “Wondering what you’re doing, how you are. I’m real... taken. That sketch I brought is really just an excuse to see you, though you probably figured as much. Last night was really fine, Jane.”

Then she was up, standing in front of the fireplace and looking down at him. “Yes, it was. But Tom, don’t make too much of it, okay? We kind of short-circuited everything out there by the Indicator, and I blame myself. I’m not sorry for what we did, just for all the things that come with it. Maybe some of what you’ve been thinking, I’ve been thinking too. But sometimes I just want it all real slow, Tom.” She smiled. “Though that may be hard to believe. You can’t count on me. I’ve been around, and there’s something real hard inside me I can use when I want it. I’ll tell you about my men someday, maybe. Then things will make a little more sense, I hope.”

Shephard nodded: to some statements there is nothing much to add, he thought. “Well, yeah. Take things as they come, I guess.” He stood up and kissed her cheek.

“Good seeing you, Tommy.”

He stopped at the door and said the same thing back.

Later that night he hung the painting from Ella’s on his living room wall, where Hopper’s Nighthawks had been. Compared to the red-black nightmare that now dominated his home, Hopper’s ode to loneliness had seemed almost cheerful, he thought. Beside the painting he thumbtacked the Identikit sketch, the face that included all the darkness of the painting, and then some.

And still, Shephard noted, still the sonofabitch smiled.

Early Sunday morning Shephard found Little Theodore slouched against the sissy bar of his motorcycle at the back of the Church of New Life drive-in lot. Sunday had broken bright and clear over the County, with a desert breeze washing away Saturday’s stifling smog like a wiper on a windshield. The wind was warm, but promised even at seven o’clock to become hot before the morning was gone, a dry, scrubbed, high-pitched wind that stung Shephard’s nostrils as he pulled the LaVerda up beside Theodore. The big man was working on a half gallon of Gatorade, which he offered to Shephard.

“Hotter’n a whore on payday,” Theodore said, and cast Shephard a giant smile. Shephard noticed that Theodore had washed his hair and that the black T-shirt, stretched tight around his arms and almost to breaking around his belly, was conspicuously clean. He gulped the thirst-killer and found it unspiked. “You got me a tad drunk the other night, little fella. Felt like a stomped-on toad next day.”

Theodore hooked the theater speaker to the handlebar of his bike and it crackled to life with the sounds of a steel guitar. He turned it down, his massive head bent in concentration as he fiddled with the knob. When he got the volume to his liking, he leaned back against the Harley’s bar. Shephard noted the twisted, dried something that dangled from the arch of the bar top.

“Dried apricot?” he asked as a warm puff of wind sent it swaying.

Theodore tilted his head up for a look, then shook a slow no. “Bit off a woman’s ear in Cheyenne. Imagine a little gal trying to stick me with a knife? And don’t go asking why, little jackass, them days is long over.” Theodore gave his bike a shake and watched the ear dance, a smile breaking through his beard. “Long over. Just a little reminder of what a woman can do to a man. Hey, pissant, you looked a little nervous on the TV the other night. Got to learn some polish, you want to be famous as me someday.”

Shephard handed Theodore the Identikit sketch, then adjusted himself comfortably on the seat. The ride into Santa Ana had been fast: his heart still hadn’t settled. But the thrill was nothing even close to the one he’d felt that night at Diver’s Cove when Jane Algernon took him in and arched her back into the stars.