Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

“There’s no Second Marine Aircraft Wing at Miramar,” I said. “No Colonel Richard Hauser at Miramar, either. Never has been.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty damned.”

“Okay,” she said. “I believe you.”

“ Okay? Then who’s that in the picture on your refrigerator?”

Another catch of breath. Impatience or exasperation. She used both hands to put her sunglasses back on, wedding band and engagement ring glinting in the sun.

“Richard, of course. We divorced two years ago, before the move to Oceanside. Richard is a clinical psychologist. That’s him in the picture, though. We rented the flight suit from a costume shop. For fun. The picture was taken at the Flying Leatherneck Museum, not an actual runway. We all liked it so much. The three of us happy and together. I don’t have many pictures like that.”

“So you leave it out for visitors.”

“To document a failed marriage with a good memory. Get it?”

“Why wear the rings?”

“They simplify.”

My face hurt. I felt mentally off-balance. The warmer my body got, the worse everything felt. I wanted to be frozen again. I wondered if the concussion that should have come earlier was finally arriving. Decided that this pretty woman sitting in front of me was one of the least trustworthy people I’d ever met. Like a talking doll. You just pulled the string and she blabbed whatever was set to come out next. I entertained the idea of a refund, a washing of hands, a day or two in bed, and an easier, more satisfying case.

“Where is Richard now?” I asked, not sure I cared.

“He took a position in Eugene. With a healthcare chain.”

“Which one?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“The city where your parents died.”

“I met him there, actually. In Eugene. After Mom and Dad.”

“The number you gave me for him was bad.”

“He’s obviously changed it. I haven’t called that number in almost two years.”

“None of the search services I subscribe to have a record of your marriage to Richard Hauser, or to anyone else. They tend not to miss little things like that.”

“We eloped in Reno.”

“You’re beginning to exhaust me, Mrs. Rideout.”

“I do that to people.” She stood. Came around the long picnic table and sat down beside me. Set her sunglasses on the table again. The drift of time and scent. Leaned in and set both her hands over one of mine. Warm where the ice had been.

“Mr. Ford, please don’t give up on me and Daley. There’s darkness all around us. We need you. I know she’s fallen in with very bad people. I also know some of what you’ve done in your life, and gone through, and been made into. And I admire you very much. I may strike you as Little Miss Conduct, but I’m a good person. See?”

I saw her eyes from point blank then, the blue of the iris and the indigo spokes around the pupil. Kaleidoscopes of sunlight. A gathering, judgmental beauty in them. I didn’t look away. Hadn’t not looked away since I met Justine. Let this unsettling fact join the river of unsettling facts running through me at that moment.

We sat there, hand on hand for a while. A man beside a woman, a woman beside a man.

“I’ll walk myself to the car,” she said.

“I can manage that much.”

Slow going, across the patio and up the railroad ties to the circular driveway, where Penelope’s cheerful yellow Beetle sat in the shade of a central coast live oak. I saw Burt and Frank not-so-covertly watching us from the far shore of the pond, where they were fishing for bass in the cattails. I saw Justine gliding past them in the rowboat, wearing a swimsuit and the floppy white hat she always wore. Dick glanced at me from the porch of casita one, where he sat in his Adirondack chair, overcasually clipping his fingernails. And Liz, way down in front of casita six, happening to look my way as she laced her shoes, tennis bag beside her, racquets protruding. Violet studied me frankly from the front porch of casita four, talking on the phone.

“Apparently you get plenty of supervision around here,” said Penelope.

“Only when I need it.”

“Must be nice.”

Violet, Frank, and I sat in the Cathedral by the Sea that Sunday morning, a full house, color-stained sunlight slanting through the windows and a rock band getting ready to start things off.

It had been three days since my close loss to SNR Security. The colors of my face were a little less vivid, the swelling was down, and my stitches itched. The rib hurt only if I breathed. Daley Rideout had remained fully vanished since the call to her sister. Neither Darrel Walker, Oceanside PD, nor any of the several state and federal agencies I called would tell me anything other than that she was still missing and there had been no new developments in the case. Private investigators rank only slightly above registered sex offenders when it comes to need-to-know. Darrel, to his credit, seemed concerned about my split-decision loss to SNR Security, said he’d see what he could find out about the company.

When the rock band kicked in, Violet paused her story about hitting tennis balls with Serena at a fund-raiser one summer, folded her hands over one knee, and listened up. Frank, who rarely spoke English away from home, was silent. Fingering the straw Borsalino I’d worn to protect the public from my face, I watched Pastor Reggie Atlas stride through the camera flashes to the pulpit.

He was taller than I’d guessed from his pictures on the Internet, and he had an athlete’s spring to his step. Tan and trim. He looked to be late thirties or early forties, but I remembered he was forty-nine now. God was taking good care of his pastor. God and our healthy Southern California lifestyle. Reggie wore crisp new jeans, a long-sleeved open-collared white shirt, and white athletic shoes. His messy blond hair gave him a boyish look.

I looked around at the packed room. Every pew full and enough people standing to drive a fire captain crazy. The mezzanine was filled to its railing.

Today’s sermon was “Your Road to Damascus.”

Atlas started off with an emotional call for God to bless our fighting men and women overseas, and for the congregation to help lift their spirits through the Onward Soldiers Fund, which was sending thousands of dollars’ worth of material every month to U.S. military deployed throughout the world. Exactly $55,375 so far, said Atlas, which averaged out to over four thousand dollars raised right here by this congregation every month since the Cathedral by the Sea had opened last year. The funds were matched by the Western Evangelical Alliance, doubling their value. The church had sent hundreds of phones, tablets, and sunglasses, mountains of healthy snack foods, crates of sunscreen, Quick Cooler bandanas, and compact “military-grade” Holy Bibles to servicemen and — women in more than a dozen countries. He said that God in his wisdom had made American fighting men and women the best in the world. And that America, as God’s chosen country, was obligated to defend this beautiful world from the godless, the evil, and the forces of Satan. In the end, God’s will be done. As an ex-Marine, I felt proud to be called the best. Along with hundreds of millions of other young people throughout history who had heard a similar message and bought it.

Following his Onward Soldiers Fund pitch, Pastor Reggie took his sermon from the fields of battle to the personal battles faced by Christians. He said that the battle with outer enemies — such as those Satan-inspired terrorists in the Middle East — and our inner enemies — such as greed, selfishness, lust for money, and lust for the flesh — are all part of the same battle. He said that, like Paul, we each will face a reckoning on our various roads to Damascus.