Michael Connelly: The Narrows

"The people he was so fascinated by, the killers and their victims. Their families. He was obsessed. Sometimes I think they were more important to him than we were."

She stared out across the pass as she said this. Opening the door had let the traffic noise in. The freeway down below sounded like a distant ovation in some sort of arena where the games never ended. I opened the door all the way and stepped out onto the deck. I looked down into the brush and thought about the life-and-death struggle that had taken place there the year before. I had survived to find out that, like Terry McCaleb, I was a father. In the months since, I had learned to find in my daughter's eyes what Terry had once told me he had already found in his daughter's. I knew to look for it because he had told me. I owed him something for that.

Graciela came out behind me.

"Will you do this for me? I believe what my husband said about you. I believe you can help me and help him."

And maybe help myself, I thought but didn't say. Instead I looked down at the freeway and saw the sun reflected on the windshields of the cars moving through the pass. It was like a thousand bright, silver eyes were watching me.

"Yes," I said, "I will do it."

My first interview was on the docks at the Cabrillo Marina in San Pedro. I always liked coming down this way but rarely did. I didn't know why. It was one of those things you forget about until you do it again and then you remember that you like it. The first time I arrived I was a sixteen-year-old runaway. I made my way down to the Pedro docks and spent my days getting tattooed and watching the tuna boats come in. I spent my nights sleeping in an unlocked towboat called Rosebud. Until a harbormaster caught me and I was sent back to the foster home, the words Hold Fast tattooed across my knuckles.

Cabrillo Marina was newer than that memory. These weren't the working docks where I had ended up so many years before. Cabrillo Marina provided dockage for pleasure craft. The masts of a hundred sailboats poked up behind its locked gates like a forest after a wildfire. Beyond these were rows of power yachts, many in the millions of dollars in value. Some not. Buddy Lockridge's boat was not a floating castle. Lockridge, who Graciela McCaleb told me was her husband's charter partner and closest friend at the end, lived on a thirty-two-foot sailboat that looked like it had the contents of a sixty-footer on its deck. It was a junker, not by virtue of the boat itself but by how it was cared for. If Lockridge had lived in a house it would've had cars on blocks in the yard and walls of stacked newspapers inside.

He had buzzed me in at the gate and emerged from the cabin wearing shorts, sandals and a T-shirt worn and washed so many times the inscription across the chest was unreadable. Graciela had called him ahead of time. He knew I wanted to talk to him but not the exact reason why.

"So," he said as he stepped off the boat onto the dock. "Graciela said you are looking into Terry's death. Is this like an insurance thing or something?"

"Yes, you could say that."

"You like a private eye or something?"

"Something like that, yeah."

He asked for identification and I showed him the laminated wallet copy of my license that had been sent to me from Sacramento. He raised a quizzical eyebrow at my formal first name.

"Hieronymus Bosch. Like that crazy painter, huh?"

It was rare that someone recognized the name. That told me something about Buddy Lockridge.

"Some say he was crazy. Some think he accurately foretold the future."

The license seemed to appease him and he said we could talk in his boat or we could walk over to the chan- dlery to get a cup of coffee. I wanted to get a look inside his home and boat-it was basic investigative strategy -but didn't want to be obvious about it so I told him I could use some caffeine.

The chandlery was a ship's store that was a five-minute walk down the dock. We small-talked as we walked over and I mostly listened to Buddy complain about his portrayal in the movie that had been inspired by McCaleb's heart transplant and his search for his donor's killer.

"They paid you, didn't they?" I asked when he was finished.

"Yes, but that's not the point."

"Yes it is. Put your money in the bank and forget about the rest. It's just a movie."

There were some tables and benches outside the chandlery and we took our coffees there. Lockridge started asking questions before I got the chance. I let him run his line out a little bit. My view was that he was a very important piece of my investigation, since he knew Terry McCaleb and was one of two witnesses to his death. I wanted him to feel comfortable with me so I let him ask away.

"So what's your pedigree?" he asked. "Were you a cop?"

"Almost thirty years. With the LAPD. Half of the time I worked homicides."

"Murders, huh? Did you know Terror?"

"What?"

"I mean, Terry. I called him Terror."

"How come?"

"I don't know. I just did. I give everyone nicknames. Terry had seen firsthand the terror of the world, you know what I mean? I called him Terror."

"What about me? What's my nickname going to be?"

"You…"

He looked at me like a sculptor sizing up a block of granite.

"Um, you are Suitcase Harry."

"How come?"

"Because you're sort of rumpled, like you live out of a suitcase."

I nodded.

"Pretty good."

"So, did you know Terry?"

"Yes, I knew him. We worked a few cases together when he was with the bureau. Then one more after he got the new heart."

He snapped his fingers and pointed at me.

"Now I remember, you were the cop. You were the one who was here that night on his boat when those two goons showed up to do him in. You saved him and then he turned around and saved you."

I nodded.

"That's right. Now can I ask some questions, Buddy?"

He spread his hands wide, indicating he was available and had nothing to hide.

"Oh, sure, man, I didn't mean to be hogging the microphone, you know?"

I took out my notebook and put it on the table.

"Thanks. Let's start with that last charter. Tell me about it"

"Well, what do you want to know?"

"Everything." Lockridge expelled his breath.

"That's a tall order," he said.

But he began to tell me the story. What he initially told me matched the minimal accounts I had read in the Las Vegas papers and what I had then heard when I attended McCaleb's funeral. McCaleb and Lockridge had been on a four-day, three-night charter, taking a party of one into waters off Baja California to fish for marlin. While returning to Avalon Harbor on Catalina on the fourth day McCaleb collapsed at the boat's topside helm station. They were 22 miles off the coast, midway between San Diego and Los Angeles. A help call was radioed to the U.S. Coast Guard and a rescue chopper was dispatched. McCaleb was airlifted to a hospital in Long Beach, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

When he was finished telling it I nodded like it had matched everything I had already heard.

"Did you actually see him collapse?"

"No, not really. I felt it, though."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, he was up on top at the wheel. I was in the pit with the charter party. We were headed north, going home. The party'd had enough fishing by then so we weren't even trolling. Terry had it flat out, probably doing twenty-five knots. So me and Otto-he's the party-we were in the cockpit and the boat suddenly made a ninety-degree turn to the west. Out to sea, man. I knew that wasn't in the plan so I climbed up the ladder to poke my head up there and I see Terry sort of hunched over the wheel. He'd collapsed. I got to him and he was alive but, man, he was out of it."

"What did you do?" "I was a lifeguard once. Venice Beach. I still know my CPR. I called Otto up on top and I went to work on Terry while Otto got control of the boat and got on the radio to call the Coast Guard. I was never able to bring Terry around but I kept putting air into him until that helicopter showed up. Took them long enough, too."