Brett Battles - Every Precious Thing

Whatever the answers, this needed to end now . It had been going on way too long. Though she had other matters that required her attention, she could no longer trust this issue to anyone else. She had decided to fly out herself and lead the search. It was the only way she could be sure of a satisfactory ending.

She glanced at her watch again, even more agitated than before. She was sure the ending she craved lay to the East, but she wasn’t getting there any faster as her plane endlessly taxied through LAX.

Four more bars and Logan found himself no better off than he’d been when he left The Hideaway. It was almost midnight when he walked into the fifth, a place called the Sunshine Room. It was in a low-slung building connected to the Sand Castle Motel just off the main drag.

The Sunshine Room did not live up to its name. The interior was almost as dark as the desert night outside. Whereas The Hideaway had elevated itself above dive-bar status, the Sunshine Room seemed to embrace its seediness.

It was only large enough for four tables and the bar. A handwritten sign on the wall read: RESTROOM OUTSIDE AROUND BACK. The toilet’s location didn’t seem to help eliminate the stale odor of piss and beer that hovered in the room.

Logan walked over to the laminated bar, where a tired old man stationed on the other side looked annoyed by the fact he had a new customer.

Instead of asking Logan what he wanted, he merely looked at him, waiting.

Logan used his now familiar opening line. “What do you have on tap?”

“Beer.” The man’s voice was scratchy.

“Okay. Sounds good.” It was Logan’s seventh beer that night, but beside the first one, he’d only taken a sip or two of the others so he didn’t really care what the man brought.

The bartender filled a glass with something that almost looked like water, and set it on the bar. “Four fifty.”

Logan pulled out a ten.

When the bartender returned with his change, Logan pulled out his phone and turned it so the man could see the screen. “Did a guy come around last night and show you this picture?”

The bartender glanced at Sara’s photo, then looked at Logan through narrow eyes. “You a cop?”

“No.”

“You kind of look like one.”

“Army,” Logan said. “Once.”

“That could be it, I guess.” The man jutted his chin at the phone. “So what’s the deal?”

“My friend got beat up last night near The Hideaway. I think it was because of this.”

The man shook his head, said, “I don’t know nothing,” and started to turn away.

It was clear, though, that he did know something. “What did you tell him?”

Swiveling back, the man said, “Didn’t tell him nothing. Nothing to tell.”

“So he was here.”

The bartender frowned. “I guess. So what?”

“My friend wasn’t doing anything wrong. There was no reason for him to get beat up like that.”

“Then that makes it all the worse, don’t it?”

This time, the old man did walk off, not stopping until he reached the far end of the bar, where he started wiping down the counter. After a moment, Logan got up and walked over.

“What did you tell him?”

“Already told you. Nothing.”

Logan stared at him, his face immobile.

The corner of the man’s mouth twitched. “Maybe you should leave.”

Logan remained silent.

The man opened the cash register and pulled out a five-dollar bill. “Here’s your money back. I don’t want it. Now get out.”

Logan heard a chair behind him scrape across the floor. He didn’t know if it was someone coming to the bartender’s aid or heading for the exit, but there was no need to find out.

“Sure,” he said. He took a step back, leaving the money on the bar. “Thanks for your help.”

Logan’s alarm went off at five minutes to two a.m. Though the El Camino’s seat wasn’t exactly the best place to sleep, it was better than the metal truck bed in back.

He was in a parking lot behind an insurance office across the street from the Sunshine Room. He got out and walked over to the corner of the building and peeked around it at the bar. The lights were still on, and a few cars remained in the lot, but they wouldn’t be there for long. Two a.m. was closing time in California.

He watched patiently as people trickled out and drove away. Finally there was only an ancient VW Bug left, so he guessed it must belong to the bartender. He climbed back into the El Camino, and pulled out onto the side street, his lights off.

Leaning over, he popped open the glove compartment, intending to look for a piece of paper he could write the VW’s license number on. Just inside was a white business-sized envelope. Sara’s note. He didn’t remember putting it in there and guessed he must have left it on the seat, and Harp or Barney stuck it in the box so it wouldn’t be lost. This was not something he could write on, so he lifted it to see if there was anything underneath.

That’s when he realized it wasn’t Sara’s note. It was the envelope Len had left his father.

He knew he should just ignore it, but he’d seen how the contents had affected Harp. Maybe if he knew what was inside, he could figure out a way to help. He hesitated, then pulled open the flap.

He’d been expecting a letter or a picture or something like that. What he found was another, though smaller, envelope. The paper had browned and felt stiff. He couldn’t help noticing the postmark in the corner: May 14, 1944.

The addressee was Tommy Harper, and the sender was Neal Harper. A letter from Logan’s dad to his uncle.

He took a breath and flipped it over.

A letter that had never been opened. The reason was obvious. It had been sent right around the time Uncle Tom went missing.

No wonder it had hit his father so hard.

Carefully, Logan put it back the way he’d found it.

What he knew of his uncle’s time in the navy was little. Tom had served as an ordnanceman on a PBY, which was a plane that landed on water, picking up downed pilots and inserting commando units in places where no other aircraft could get. He also knew Tom’s plane had simply disappeared while returning to its base in Perth, Australia, from a mission in southern Indonesia. That was pretty much it.

Logan had always been wary of bringing up his uncle to Harp because anytime the subject had arisen, his father’s normal, easy-going manner would dim, almost in reverence.

Refocusing on why he was sitting in his car in the middle of the night, he found an old map in the back of the glove box, wrote the VW’s license number on it, and waited.

Twenty minutes passed before the old guy finally came out. He shuffled over to the VW like someone who’d lived hard and was now just marking the days. It took him two tries to get the Bug started, but when he did, he wasted no time hitting the road. Logan gave him a five-second lead before following.

The town wasn’t big, so even though they drove clear to the other side, it was only seven minutes before the bartender pulled into the driveway of a small, boxy house. As he did, Logan coasted his El Camino to the curb a block away and killed the engine.

The neighborhood had a weariness born from decades existing in the hot, arid desert. Almost half the houses on the block had FOR SALE signs in their front yards, and many looked like their tenants had already moved out.

This wasn’t a neighborhood of trees or hedges, but of poorly growing grass and dirt, so Logan had a clear view of the bartender entering his house. Once the front door closed, he quietly exited his car.

The first thing he did was to check for any indication that someone else also lived there, but there was very little outside. As far as vehicles went, the VW was it. After a quick scan to make sure no one was watching, Logan jogged up to the fence at the side of the house, and took a look over it. More dirt, a couple of forgotten lawn chairs, and a pile of scrap metal in the back corner.