T. Parker - Laguna Heat

He decided to start with the best, on the theory that anyone who can afford to leave over a thousand dollars behind can afford the best hotel in the city, and that a person on foot might be in need of a room. Predictably, the Surf and Sand had been booked for the last month. So had the Martinique and the Hotel California. The Laguna Hotel reported a single check-in at eight that morning, a “young man with a nice suntan.” The Whaler’s Inn had accepted a family of five at nine o’clock, “full-on touristas,” according to the clerk. Monday business was slow.

Shephard worked his way down the list of Laguna Beach hotels and motels, descending without luck to the city’s worst, the Hotel Sebastian. He remembered it from his boyhood in Laguna as a hangout for third-echelon Brotherhood converts, the money- and high-seeking opportunists who took over Timothy Leary’s organization in its last days. The owner, a James Hylkama, said that a man of “about sixty” had checked in, bagless, at seven that morning. He had given his name as William Hodges of Fresno and paid for three days in advance. Seven would be about the right time, Shephard calculated, for a man on horseback to go from Laguna Canyon Road to the edge of the city, then on foot to the Sebastian.

His phone buzzed and Chief Darrel “Pete” Hannover’s smooth voice summoned Shephard to his office. The chief was sitting squarely behind his oak desk, elbows out and hands folded, when Shephard walked in. He was dressed as usual in a three-piece suit that suggested commerce rather than law enforcement, action rather than the polite sloth that was Hannover’s trademark. He was known as a good administrator in a department with little to administer, and a good talker who rarely had anything to say. He motioned Shephard to sit down and offered him a cigarette, which Shephard accepted.

“As I indicated when you were hired, Shephard, my method is to stay out of the investigations and workings of my men and women. Laguna Beach has an average yearly homicide rate of point five, which translates to one murder every two years. This is the first one all year, and the most singularly hideous that I’ve encountered in thirty years with the city.” He leveled a grave expression on Shephard. “I don’t want to know who your suspects are, what your leads are, or what your hunches might be. Professionals work best sans encumbrance. I simply want quotidian assurance — for the mayor and myself — that you are doing everything possible to make an arrest. Do I have that?”

“Everything possible, absolutely.” Shephard dragged deeply on the cigarette and regretted missing breakfast and lunch. The smoke dazed him.

“You know how I like to think of Laguna Beach, Shephard? And I’m sure the city council and Chamber of Commerce agree. I like to think of our city as a nice quiet little town where people come and spend their money in peace. A tourist town is only as good as its image. The only thing worse than murder would be a giant shark eating bodysurfers off Main Beach. You remember Jaws, don’t you?”

“A fine film.”

“My favorite part was the storytelling scene in the boat. The lost art of verbal painting. But I’m getting sidetracked, Shephard. My brain is on a right-side tack today. I just want you to know that I’m counting on you and depending on you. And I want you to depend and count on me, too. Say what people might about your father’s former connections to this department, I can assure you that I hired you for your talent, not out of sentiment. Youngest detective on the L.A. force, weren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“And you got a handful of awards and commendations before the, uh, trouble, right?”

“Yes, sir, before the trouble.”

“That’s the kind of work I expect, Shephard. That’s all; you can go now. By the way, how is Wade Shephard these days? I saw his television sermon last week.”

“He’s fine, chief.”

“Pass along my regards, Tom. Au revoir.”

Shephard drove the Mustang through the stop-and-go traffic on Coast Highway, heading south toward the Hotel Sebastian. In the crosswalk in front of him a band of saffron-robed Hare Krishnas chanted and banged drums, their robes fluttering in the afternoon breeze, their shaved heads shiny in the merciless summer sun. He recognized one of them as a boy from his high school chemistry class and offered a wave. The thin young man returned a mute stare to Shephard, then aimed his droning song back heavenward. Karma, he thought. Just what the hell is it? To the west, the Pacific sparkled and heaved against the dark rocks. While he waited for the light to change, Shephard regarded the water and sky, the covey of lovely legged women who walked along the shops facing the highway. The hometown hasn’t really changed, he thought. But seeing his own reflection in the rearview mirror, he realized that something had changed, and that something was himself. The hair was thinner, the face no longer boyish, the eyes calmer and less eager. Ten years ago he had driven the same car down the same street, perhaps seen the same shops and tourists, but it didn’t feel the same now. He had left Laguna at the age of twenty for the Los Angeles Police Academy, and had worked twelve years in L.A. Now he was back, without the wife he had taken with him, without the illusions of a simple life. Full circle, he thought, to the city of my birth. He did not consider himself disillusioned, simply non-illusioned. He had come to Laguna to start over. In the shower that morning he had told himself again that today he would start to start over. Was it the hundredth time?

The Hotel Sebastian hadn’t changed, that much was obvious. He saw its dull yellow walls rising from the hill of iceplant on the inland side of the highway, a rickety structure that seemed always on the verge of collapse. The feeble stairway still zigzagged up from the sidewalk, the faded sign still proclaimed the Hotel Sebastian to be the “Jewel of the Pacific.”

Shephard turned left on Serra Street, climbed sharply, and swung the car into the hotel courtyard. The first cottage on his right had a sign outside that read: MANAGER: JAMES HYLKAMA. He found a space beside the manager’s slot and pulled in. The courtyard was gravel, bleached white by the sun and stained by lost oil and exhaust. A grove of eucalyptus trees loomed over the small cottages, which were arranged in a horseshoe pattern. Shephard noted the rusted patio furniture outside the manager’s office as he knocked. The man who answered looked like Mickey Rooney.

“Help ya?” the man asked, his voice deep and clear. Shepard produced his badge, and the door swung open. Inside, the room was sunny and neat and smelled of bacon. A large woman bent over an ironing board, bearing down on the wrinkles of a white shirt. She looked up and smiled, but said nothing. “I’m Jimmy Hylkama. This is Dorothy. What can I do you for?”

“I called an hour ago about William Hodges. I’d like to see him.” The bacon made Shephard think of the breakfast he’d missed.

“Popular guy, that Hodges,” Hylkama decided. He scratched his balding head, like an acting student doing perplexity. “He checked in at seven, and an old friend stopped by at nine. Now you. Trouble is, Hodges is gone.”

“An old friend came by?” Shephard asked.

Hylkama augmented the story with histrionics. His pudgy hands seemed to take on a separate life, rising, dipping, returning like tethered birds to his body. Shephard listened intently, making notes in his small notebook. It took him only a moment to realize that Hylkama’s gestures were not the cover of a liar but the accompaniment of a man who loved to talk. The lost art of verbal painting, he thought; Hannover should see this.

Unlike the man’s active hands, his narrative was straight-forward and orderly. At just after seven that morning, Hylkama was eating his breakfast of bacon and eggs. Dot had cooked it. There was a knock at the door, and Hylkama had opened it to find an “elderly type of man.” He noted that the man was approximately his and Dot’s own age, been married forty years by the way. He was short, average build, and dressed like many of his frankly down-and-out, alcoholic tenants. Gray-black hair, straight, a little on the long side. Beard and mustache, neat. Hylkama’s hands became circles, which he pressed to his eyes as he made his next point.