Т Паркер - The Room of White Fire

“And how many guns?”

“In the drawer? Just one.”

“Funny. Will you have to get fake ID?”

“Already have some.”

“You are a contradictory man. Risking wrong for right.”

“Guilty as charged.”

I heard the faint hollow sound of her car on the road. “I’m very sorry I drank so much and made a fool of myself last night.”

“You weren’t a fool.”

“Of course I was. I’m not accustomed to what we did last night,” she said. “Or didn’t do. Does that make sense? Could we start over?”

I thought about that. “Might be easier to just continue.”

A beat. “You’re a good man,” she said. “I hope I’m a good doctor. It’s all I ever wanted to be. Is that enough to justify a life?”

“Being a good donut maker is enough to justify a life.”

“I was trying to fix us last night. Cure us. So doctoral of me. So presumptuous.” A pause. “Text me as soon as you’ve set up your phone and come up with a name. I want to hear from Nell Flanagan’s ‘story editor’ as soon as possible. Let’s get this show in the can, Roland. I want my partner safe and on the road to some kind of healing again.”

“It won’t be long.”

8:02 AM

Dear Dr. Paige Hulet,

Thank you for responding to my earlier email and for offering your contact information. As I explained, I am David Wills, story editor for Nell Flanagan, multiple-Emmy-winning KPBS show host. I would like to communicate with Arcadia resident Clay Hickman regarding the story idea in his 4/3 email to Nell. You now have my cell.

9:42 AM

Dear Mr. Wills,

Arcadia has procedures in place for such requests. But I will happily tell Mr. Hickman of your interest.

9:42 AM

Dear Dr. Hulet,

Appreciated and hopeful.

Clay’s text message came through nine minutes later:

9:51 AM

Dear Mr. Wills,

Thank you for contacting my doctor. I worked in a secret CIA prison in Romania in 2008 and early 2009. I was a United States Air Force airman assigned to private contractors. My story is about what happened to a high-value detainee with important intel, or so we believed. We subjected him to EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques). Then other events transpired. My story is true. I have graphic evidence of key moments in our procedures and of the tragedy that unfolded. The graphic evidence is video with sound. A San Diego — area celebrity is involved. The detainee’s name was Aaban. This is a very disturbing story and not for the faint of heart. Nell Flanagan is my choice to tell this story because she is smart and kind to all people on her show.

Sincerely,

11:46 AM

Dear Mr. Hickman,

Stories involving national security are tricky, at best. Federal government/military are generally unwilling to cooperate and can make things difficult. Still, I will communicate this information to Nell Flanagan. She is extremely busy and under constant deadlines. I sense a good story here. She will certainly have questions, in particular, about statements such as “then other events transpired.” And of course, who is the San Diego “celebrity” you mention? Can you write a brief synopsis and make your graphic evidence available to us now, as a timely way of giving us a better idea of the story possibilities?

11:47 AM

No. I can only do that when I have a commitment from Nell.

11:55 AM

I understand, but hope that’s not a deal breaker!

11:56 AM

Someone will want to air this story.

12:20 PM

I will present this in a positive light. We’ll see what Nell says. Out of office today but will text late afternoon with Nell’s response.

I sat at the picnic table, finishing lunch and reading the morning paper. The war on homegrown terror. Middle class sucks more wind. New Secretary of Defense. Padres picked to strike out in the NL West. Bad news makes bad thoughts. Such as John, Laura, and Michael Vazquez. What kind of god would let that happen to them? I thought: Don’t get me started.

Because I felt my personal luck turning. The April day was clear and warm. Lindsey had not only made me lunch but paid her rent, only ten days late. On his morning hike, Wesley Gunn had shot video of a peregrine falcon taking a dove out of the sky. Clay Hickman had responded quickly to David Wills’s interest in his story. Paige Hulet had couriered me another cash payment of forty-eight hundred U.S. dollars, reflecting Briggs Spencer’s urgent doubling of my hourly wage. I regretted having taken his money to begin with, but until taking it I had never known the depth of his involvement in torture for profit. Let him get his damned white fire, whatever it might be. Morally, his cash would spend just fine.

So, I was ready for good things to happen. For Clay and Sequoia to return uninjured to civilization. For me to see Paige Hulet again. For science to find a cure for Wesley’s eyes, for Lindsey to sober up enough to get joint custody of her son, for the Padres to win the wild card, for global warming to stop. My mother used to tell me I was too much of a softie to be a good Marine. Which I’m sure applied equally to being a good boxer, cop, or investigator. Maybe she was right. I sure didn’t get much soft from her, however. She’d chew a lightbulb to get what she wanted.

And as often happens, while I was readying myself for luck, it struck on its own: a return call from Clay’s sister, Daphne, in Laguna Beach. She told me that Clay had “showed up yesterday, out of nowhere,” and she agreed to meet with me “very briefly” this afternoon. She didn’t know where Clay was headed after Laguna, only “back south.” She informed me she had dropped the name Hickman years ago and was just Daphne. Judging by her voice on the phone she wasn’t looking forward to meeting me, but you take what you can get. I was never popular in high school and learned from the experience.

I showered and shaved and found good clothes. On my way out the front door I stopped at the hat rack in the foyer and put on my Carlos Santana shantung fedora, a gift from Justine, which she told me was lucky. For you, Just. I checked my look in the mirror, set the angle of the brim. White straw, cool band, pure luck.

Laguna was an hour’s drive north for me. Daphne Hickman’s Pacific Coast Highway home sat on a bluff overlooking the beach at St. Ann’s Drive. I parked in the cobblestone drive under a canopy of king palms and stepped from my truck into the sweet Laguna air.

Daphne was tall and blond, a lithe, younger version of her mother. She welcomed me inside her home wearing blue jeans, a white halter, and no smile. The tops of her bare feet were tan and she wore a silver ankle bracelet on the left leg. I knew from her emails to Clay that she was thirty, two years older than he. The living room was white and sunny and hung with cheerful land- and seascapes of local scenes. All signed Daphne. I stood there, hat in hand, taking it all in. Sliding glass doors and a patio. An easel outside with a painting of Laguna Canyon taking shape. Beyond the painting, drooping telephone lines and palms and eucalyptus and blue ocean for as far as my eyes could see.

“I have water or iced tea,” she said.

“Water, if it’s not too much trouble. And I’d love to see some Hickman family pictures, if you have any.”

She filled a coffee cup from the sink tap and even brought it over to me. She disappeared down a hallway and came back a moment later with a bulging plastic supermarket bag hanging from her index finger. We sat facing each other, Daphne giving me the ocean view. I thought of Paige Hulet’s twenty-seventh-story view of the same body of water. Body of Paige, too.

“How was your brother yesterday when you saw him?”