T. Parker - Laguna Heat

Like a man deep in the woods just realizing he is lost, Shephard felt panic. He stumbled ahead with the most obvious question of all. “So what you say is true. So it’s not. Why did you want him dead? What’s he got on you?”

Datilla paced the courtside. He stopped a few yards away, looking through the fog toward the Surfside A Dock. “Wade earned that money,” he said finally. Shephard could scarcely hear the words. But when Datilla turned back to him they came loud, bitter, and clear: “He did me a favor once, a business favor. He gave Burton Creeley a chilly ride from the waters of Laguna to the Newport Channel. He was a cop then. It was easy. Used a 195 °Chevy to do it.”

Shephard watched Datilla return to his racket, sweat dripping from his face, and heard the wicked swish of the graphite cutting the air again. The sound was somehow far away. “That’s what he’s got on me. Burton and me. So I wanted rid of him, too. I hate his hypocrisy; I hate his righteous generosity. I hate any man who’d shoot a woman like Colleen, accident or not. But more important, like I told you, I don’t take chances. I cover my bets. I didn’t want Wade to get confessional about things. He’s got that in him. To spill it all in the name of Cod. To purify himself, or some vague notion like that. Go ahead, Tommy Shephard, take me downtown if you want. But you’ll be taking Wade, too, because when I start talking I won’t quit until his name is so foul he’d be laughed off any pulpit on earth.

“You see this? See all this?” Datilla held out his racquet, sweeping it across the Surfside, its apartments and restaurants, lounges and docks, across the bay in the distance, smothered in fog. “I built it all, covering the bets, and I’ll cover them until I die. Mercante did it all. I just gave him a little help. Listen, you came through it clean. So did Wade, and so can I. Think of the thousands of sick little souls he can save with his new hospital. Look to the future and get your ass out of the past. You’re betting the hundred now to get fifty. And I promise you one thing, Shephard” — Datilla stepped forward and pressed the end of the racquet into Shephard’s chest — “If I go down, Wade goes down, too. It’s as simple as that.”

He stooped for his bucket and took it to the far end of the court. Lost in the fog, his voice seemed to come from nowhere, Shephard thought, or maybe from everywhere.

“I’ll be right here, Tom. Don’t worry. Think about a hundred grand of my money in your pocket, and the same for those folks south of the border. Everybody’s happy now, and getting happier. I’m a little more secure. Join the club, Tom. Everybody profits. The hawks always eat the sparrows — Wade told me that.” Shephard heard the muffled pop of a tennis ball through the fog. Then Datilla’s voice again, strangely distant: “Pretty funny, isn’t it? You still there, Tom? Wade puts the wrong guy in jail to save his own ass, and when he gets out, you shoot him. Hell, with a little luck, Azul could have been your father.”

Shephard spent the next hours wandering his city, a lanky figure with a stiff walk, scarcely aware of the life that bustled around him. He stopped for a beer at Marty Odette’s Sportsplace, a cup of coffee at the Hotel Laguna, and an ice cream, which he gazed at momentarily, then gave to a boy on a skateboard.

He walked until his legs were weary and his mind wanted to give up. By afternoon the thoughts that were wrenching him had blurred and all but lost meaning, but Shephard still felt no closer to a just decision. When he looked behind him he saw a sky swirling with the ghosts of the past; when he looked forward he saw where they would surely land. To take down Datilla would bring those ghosts to rest on his father, on himself, even on Jane. And what good would there be in it, besides the downfall of Datilla, a man who had once saved his father from shame, then tried to take his life, and now was offering to pick up the tab for everybody’s damages?

Shephard’s hatred was gone, spent with his bullets in the Hotel Cora. His sense of forgiveness was bankrupt, his sense of betrayal complete. When he looked inside himself he saw no signs, heard no counsel, received no guidance from his own unparticipating heart.

Dr. Zahara changed an appointment to accommodate him. She studied him quietly from the depths of her big chair. They smoked. Shephard was aware of her green eyes prying into him.

“There’s something I should do,” he said finally. “Something that the law says should be done. Must be done. But if I do it, I’m not sure it will make any difference, and some people I love very much are going to get hurt. One of those — a woman I’m in love with — is innocent. The other is my father.”

A long silence followed. Dr. Zahara lifted the telephone and asked her receptionist to reschedule the next appointment also. When she was finished, she brushed back her black hair, then settled still farther into the shadows of her chair. “I’d like you to explain.”

When he had finished, Shephard could hear the traffic outside, thickening toward rush hour. Throughout his story, he had noticed that Zahara made no notes. She tapped her pen on the desk and turned her green eyes on him. “So, to get Joe, you must sacrifice the career and public standing of your father. How would the arrest affect Jane? I’m not sure you explained that, Tom.”

“Tim Algernon perjured himself for money. To pay for his wife’s cancer treatment. Jane and Tim weren’t very close at the end of his life. She seems to have made a peace with him that I don’t want to shatter. He’s all the family she... had.”

“I can appreciate that. Would such a detail be likely to arise from the arrest of Joe Datilla? Tim’s perjury?”

Shephard thought it over, trying the angles. “It’s possible. Joe will play dirty.”

“Then we’re back to those secrets you wanted to keep, aren’t we? This time to protect a woman you love, rather than yourself.”

“I guess we are.”

The silence that followed was a long one.

“There’s a voice in there somewhere,” she said, “trying to be heard. Let it come to you. Go somewhere quiet if you can. I’ll tell you just one thing. When you consider all the people you may hurt through your actions, don’t forget to include yourself. You’re responsible for you as much as for your father, even Jane. Don’t sacrifice yourself. It might be easy, but it would be wrong.”

“I’ll try to find that quiet place.”

“When you first came here, it was for post-shooting trauma. Strange, Tom, but that’s one thing we haven’t talked about. Have you... come to terms with Morris Mumford? With Mercante?”

Shephard considered her words. “I left them both in Mexico,” he said finally. “At the Hotel Cora.”

In the end, as always, it was instinct that took him forward.

Late that evening he found his father in the garden, tending the roses that had been ravaged by the last wind. Shephard came quietly through the living room and into the kitchen, watching through the glass patio door as Wade touched a yellow rose and tried to catch the petals that drifted off and floated to his feet. Wade turned and smiled as Shephard slid back the door. The Reverend Wade Shephard, he thought, all smiles.

“Tommy, I thought you’d sleep a week.” He peeled off his garden gloves and hugged his son, then pushed away and glanced at his side. “How is it?”

“Just a little stiff. Fine.”

Shephard sat down at the patio table in the shade of a large umbrella. The sunset was accumulating high in the west, a wispy, cirrus-streaked tableau that promised reds and blacks. Wade brought lemonade and two glasses.