Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

As part of being a bigger man, I bought a similar Cessna 182 not long after Justine died, and christened it Hall Pass 2 . I fly it for pleasure and occasionally for business. When I’m up there in the cockpit, looking down at this earth, which oddly looks bigger the farther away from it you get, I feel Justine’s presence, and some of the happiness that flying gave her. Some of the joy and the risk, too. Heightened alert. A part of me is still angry that I wasn’t with her that day. That I let her go up there, alone. Another part is afraid that what happened to her will happen to me. Why shouldn’t it?

There were tables of food and drink set up in the central park. Trays of turkey hot dogs and burgers, bowls of salad and pink boxes of donuts, all free. We bellied up but donated generously. The half-gallon tip bottles were filling quickly with bills.

I kept my hat down low, just in case Adam Revell of SNR Security had pulled a Sunday shift here. I wasn’t sure that Adam himself was among my new friends out at Paradise Date Farm, but he certainly might be.

We sat in the shade with paper plates on our laps. Frank ate as much as a bear, though his manners were better. Violet talked about making tamales on a semester in Mexico her senior year at SIUE. Which led me to note that there were very few Latinos there today. Or blacks, Asians, or American natives. Which is not in keeping with most of San Diego County, as mixed and varied as most any in this republic, I’d recently read.

I wondered if Pastor Atlas’s remarks about “our fine but less obedient neighbors” might be a general topic here. So I checked the Cathedral by the Sea reviews online.

Almost all of the comments were positive, but some were not:

My visit to the Cathedral by the Sea was very strange. I was made to feel as if I was not welcome because I am of Mexican descent. I will not go back.

Pastor Reggie is a racist jerk!

I saw almost no people of color, other than myself and my girlfriend. The people were friendly to one another, but they acted as if we were not there. Won’t go back there again.

There were several vitriolic replies to these, mostly along the lines of If you don’t like it here, why don’t you go back to your own miserable country?

After lunch we strolled along the rose garden, and under the Canary Island palms that stood, stately and pruned and calm, above us. Walked along a row of what looked like classrooms. The doors were open and I could see the walls inside, decorated with the student drawings and posters and prints that an elementary school would have. The congregation had thinned out by then, cars heading down the hill from the parking lot, church volunteers bagging the lunch debris.

We followed arrows to the office. I wanted to stop by, pick up some church lit, and see if I could get some clue to Penelope Rideout’s pointed reaction to the Cathedral by the Sea.

The office was a two-story building that looked far more humble, and much older, than the swashbuckling chapel. Inside, it was cool and open and quiet. The floors looked like 1950s linoleum shined to brilliance by janitors. A sign on the front counter read “Welcome!” There were neat stacks of pamphlets, magazines, and the Cathedral by the Sea bulletin, From the Lighthouse . Behind the counter sat two neat desks and two rolling task chairs. And beyond them, a long hallway with offices on either side. Rectangles of sunlight shining in.

“So, what are we doing here?” asked Violet. “Privately investigating?”

I shrugged, wishing I’d been more clear when I’d briefed Violet what not to say on this excursion.

“Are we searching for God or bad guys?”

I held a finger to my puffy split lip.

Her expression froze. She nodded.

Frank listened and watched but said nothing, his standard MO when he’s away from home. He was afraid someone would hear his accent, then question, arrest, and deport him. These things happen. He told me that if he returned home to El Salvador he’d be killed on sight, having witnessed his father’s murder. Here in public, I knew I was harboring and employing an illegal immigrant, but I still thought that in this case, it was the right thing to do. Which made me a criminal, too, living in a nation of laws while holding an innocent man’s life in my hands.

I helped myself to some of the church pamphlets set out on the counter. And this week’s From the Lighthouse , which had a calendar and all the upcoming events. Picked up a glossy flyer about an upcoming “Special Appearance by Lamar Fleming of Houston, Texas.” And another announcing the recent launch of Pastor Reggie Atlas’s complete recorded sermons, available online through Four Wheels for Jesus Ministry.

“Wait for me here,” I said.

Violet gave me a complicit squint and Frank nodded.

I went around the counter and into the hallway, my shoes squeaking on the polished floor. The offices left and right were marked clearly: Assistant Pastor Erica Summer, Activities Director Rudy Mercator, Bible School Administrator Patrick Clarke, Youth Minister Danella Witt. I wondered if this was the youth ministry director who had lavished attention on Daley. According to Penelope, who would have had to have mistaken Danella Witt for a man. But maybe Penelope had just gotten someone’s title wrong.

All of their doors were closed until I came to Pastor Reggie Atlas, whose door stood open.

He sat behind a desk, his back to me, looking through a window that faced the courtyard, where the last of his ten a.m. congregation was disassembling. Rungs of sunlight and shadow through half-drawn blinds.

He pivoted. “Yes?”

“I enjoyed the service. My first time here.”

“Thank you, and welcome. Come in if you’d like.”

I met him halfway to his desk, where we introduced ourselves and shook hands. Strong and cool. I took off my hat.

“Looks like a bad one,” he said.

“T-boned at a four-way stop. He never even slowed down.”

His grand smile. “Good insurance, I hope. Do you live nearby?”

“Fallbrook.”

“I have friends there. And some of my congregation, too. Please have a seat. I was preparing for noon fellowship, but I have a few minutes.”

He pulled out a chair for me, then took up his own again behind the desk. We talked San Diego: weather, surf, drought, wildfire.

“So, why do I have the feeling you didn’t come here to hear my message?” he asked pleasantly.

“I’m looking for a girl named Daley Rideout. She’s fourteen and she came here once last month.”

“Has something happened?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure exactly what.”

“What relation are you?”

“I’m a private investigator, hired to locate her.”

“Then this is very serious.”

“I believe it is.”

“I sincerely apologize, but I’ll need to see some ID.”

I got the wallet from my coat pocket, handed him a laminated copy of my license and a business card. He studied them, then handed back the mock-up.

“What day was she here?” asked Atlas.

I gave him the August date that Penelope had given me. I described Daley and said she had come with two friends, girls her age. I handed him my phone. He stared at the screen, scrolling along with one finger.

“Not familiar,” he said. “Certainly possible, though. I’m sorry, but as you saw today, the young people really turn out. So long as you don’t wake them up too early. The young are our future, Mr. Ford. They will multiply us into heaven. It wasn’t like that when I started out all those years ago. It was always the old folks back then.”

“I liked the old-man-as-an-angel story.”

A raise of an eyebrow. “Not an angel, probably. But every word of it true.”