T. Parker - Laguna Heat

“Can I break his nose?”

She slapped him gently on the arm, then turned to face him. “After that, I just said fuck it, Tom. I traveled Europe and South America, a bit of the East. I did what I wanted, when I wanted. I took some men, mostly the ones who were most sincere about me, and spit ’em back up fast as I could. It was a way to get free, you know, a way not to fall. I kept it up for a couple of years after I got back. That’s how I learned about that cold something inside of me — that thing I can use if I need to — and I made an art form out of it. Then I just quit. I’d proved whatever the point was and I wasn’t very happy. I realized the one thing I’d always loved, even at the worst times, were the beasts. Like him.” Jane rubbed Cal’s belly. “So I enrolled at UCI in biology, and I’m going on to veterinary when I get out. To tell you the truth, I haven’t really felt much of anything for a long time. Then along comes this lanky detective who won’t take the hard line for an answer. You spoiled the whole program, Tom.” She ran her fingers through his hair, gently across the stitches.

“Well, you’re a couple of years ahead of me in the pain and heartache school. Though I’ve learned a few lessons, I guess.” Shephard tipped back his vodka, mostly water by now.

“Tell me about them.”

“No. Some other time. Enough for tonight.”

“All that make you think I’m not exactly the woman you had at Diver’s Cove?”

“No, Jane. It just makes me want to take you in the bedroom and love you for a long slow time.”

“Would you do that now? Please?”

Two hours later they were still there, Jane resting peacefully with her dark hair spread against a pillow, Shephard staring at the clock. Their lovemaking had been desperate, almost frightening to him, and mixed with the haunting face of Azul Mercante, which invaded the room each time he closed his eyes. It had left him overloaded with possibilities, premonitions. The alternating current of love and hatred was a voltage he could scarcely stand.

“Time won’t stop just because you stare at a clock, Tom.”

Shephard ran his hand over her forehead, through her hair. “Sorry.”

“You want to tell me now, just what’s going on?”

He lay back and started at the beginning, the summer of bad luck at the Surfside. Burton and Hope, Joe and Helene, Tim and Margie, Wade and Colleen. Azul Mercante. Jane leaned against the wall, drawing the sheet over herself, listening silently through the rest of his story: the Bibles, the cobalt and cadmium, Mercante’s transfer from Folsom and release from Lompoc. When Shephard finished, Jane was looking at the clock too. “So Rubio is hidden, and Wade? Where’s your father?”

“On Isla Arenillas by now. Joe sent him down on his jet.”

She turned to Shephard and kissed him, then settled her head on his chest. “You know, Tom, I’ve got one more question to add to all this. All those bills that dad ran up when mom had the cancer? The forty thousand? He never paid them. There’s not a single canceled check to the hospital for all those years. And he kept canceled checks too, all of them.”

“Maybe the insurance covered it.”

“He didn’t have any. He’d always lecture me on getting good insurance, because of how much that treatment cost him.”

Shephard added this riddle to the bagful that already seemed to be weighing down his mind. Take a number, he thought, stand in line. “What year was it she first started treatment?”

“Nineteen fifty-one.”

Of course, he thought. When else?

Just before two in the morning, the phone rang. Jane flinched at the sound. Shephard pulled his robe from the bathroom door and lit a cigarette on his way to the living room. The voice that greeted him was shaky, the music in the background was new wave.

“Tom Shephard?”

He recognized the voice, but couldn’t place the agitated, nasal tone. “Speaking, chum.”

“This is Ricky Hyams. At Valentine’s, you know?”

“Rick, buddy. Sounds like a rockin’ scene down there.”

“Tom, uh, I think there’s...” The phone was lowered. Shephard heard two men talking quickly, some decision being reached. Then Hyams was back. “Tom, I think there’s something here you should see. In regard to, uh, what we talked about last week.”

“What is it, Ricky? And why should I see it when I’ve got a lovely woman in my bed?” Shephard heard the muffled movements of Jane in his bedroom, then the closing of his bathroom door.

“I can’t talk. But come here, I, uh, think you should come here right away if I were you.” It struck Shephard that Hyams was drunk, high, or both. “I’ll meet you outside the front door, okay?”

The wind had dissipated, leaving the city clean. A sparse trail of taillights glittered ahead of him down Coast Highway like the red scales on a winding snake. The oncoming headlights bore into his eyes with a new intensity.

The gay corner of town bustled with people, men arm-in-arm filling the crosswalk at Crest Street, and the liquor store seemingly crammed with bodies. A white convertible slowed in front of him as the driver considered a young hitchhiker. Shephard swerved around it onto the narrow Crest Street cul-de-sac and parked the Mustang along a red curb.

The door to Valentine’s was hidden by a crowd of men waiting to get in. They sprawled around the entrance, some dancing to the music that was loud even outside the bar. Ricky Hyams broke away from the jam and waited at the bottom of the steps. Behind him was a large man, dressed in full leather regalia, who nodded officiously at Shephard and parted the bodies as they made their way to the door.

Inside, the Valentine’s lobby was a cramped stampede of men, bunched, talking, laughing, drinking — an animated cast. Hyams nodded and chatted briefly with his constituency, guiding Shephard by the arm until they broke through the knotted bodies and into a short hallway marked by a Do Not Enter sign. The music was so loud Shephard could feel it in his bones. It receded to a series of muffled thuds when Hyams closed the door to his office after them. He had looked at Shephard once, and said nothing. When he sat down and lit a cigarette, Shephard noted the way it trembled in his hand. Ricky Hyams, Shephard thought, looked dead in the eyes.

“He was here,” he said finally. “The man in the papers. I think it was him.” He looked up at Shephard as if he expected to be hit. “It wasn’t until, uh, just a few hours ago that I realized it might be him. Then, again, Tommy, it might not be, so if it isn’t don’t get down on me too hard about tonight, but better than not calling at all, isn’t it?” He looked down at the blotter on his desk. “Oh hell.” The bottle of gin that he took out of a drawer was a pint, and still half-full. “Been at this bottle all night,” he said, holding it in front of his face. “I don’t drink very often.”

“When did you see him?”

Hyams gulped, but not much gin seemed to disappear. “First time last week. Monday, I think it was. Off and on since then. But he’s gone now. Left late tonight with a suitcase, and took a taxi. I know because I can see the courtyard from my apartment.”

“He had a room here?”

“Checked in Monday afternoon. Older guy with gray hair and beard, and blue eyes that you don’t feel good looking at.” Hyams attacked the bottle again, slurping. He lit another cigarette even though the first one was half alive. “Shit. Dammit to hell. Tom, you’re not the first one interested in this guy. Monday night, a man showed up at the desk and asked to see me alone. He said he was interested in getting a key to the apartment that John Dixon had just rented. Dixon is your man, Tom.” Hyams scanned the room, as if looking for something he had lost. “That isn’t such an unusual request around here. Our clients tend to become familiar with each other rather quickly, and sometimes, uh, well, a room is a room, right?”