Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

“Daley is very popular,” said Yash.

“The van driver,” I said.

“Yes. He came in, bought a hot pepperoni stick and a thirty-two-ounce beer. He said he was looking for a girl. She had been here very early last Thursday morning. I told him I was working then. He described her. And the hoodie that she wore, with the humorous question on it. He said he was her uncle.”

Late forties, said Yash. Short, stocky, medium brown hair, wearing shorts, a light blue Hawaiian shirt with outriggers and coconuts on it, and leather flip-flops. Needed a shave. Runny blue eyes.

Yash didn’t like his attitude. He told the man he didn’t remember such a girl. The man left. Didn’t give a name or leave a number.

“And the sister?” I asked.

“We talked and talked,” said Yash. “She was nothing like the first time I saw her. When a customer needed to pay, she stepped aside and drank her Slurpee. The Raspberry Blast stained her gums red, so we laughed. What a positive spirit she has. But so worried. She’s very conflicted.”

I was still trying to figure her out, but at least I had to agree with Yash’s assessment of her.

I worked the city of San Clemente from north to south, on both sides of I-5. A searcher, all motion and hungry eyes. Drifting fog and stars. Good strong coffee from Yash. Camino de Estrella, Pico, Palizada. Nice neighborhoods, homes built close together down by the ocean, not so close up in the hills. Light retail. Not much traffic. A sleepy beach town.

I was fooling no one, not even myself. I knew my chances of spotting Daley Rideout were too small to matter. But just big enough to create hope. So I drove, looking for that tiny dot of hope, smaller than a taillight but big enough to see. I studied the pedestrians. The faces in cars, briefly lit, then gone. Kept my eyes out for silver Expeditions and old white panel vans. Because Roland Ford digs to the bottom of things.

South all the way to the city limit. San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station loomed half-lit in the middle distance, its spent fuel rods cooling in their casks. Cooling for the next hundred thousand years. Protected from earthquake, tsunami, thieves, and terrorists by SNR Security, who would not be interviewed for this story. Who had jumped me near a desert date farm for mentioning a girl’s name. As the pain faded, my thirst for vengeance grew.

Downtown. Avenida del Mar. Pedestrians out on this summer night. Not as many as in Laguna or Newport to the north, or La Jolla or Encinitas to the south. Here in downtown San Clemente you don’t even have to pay for parking. I cruised past the restaurants and cafés and the folksy little shops, half of them already closed. Backed into a parking space for a good view of the street. Right in front of the Mongkut Thai restaurant, and through my cracked window the air smelled very, very good. Salt air and spices.

Thought I’d sit for a minute before I left my truck, hit the street, and made my long-shot rounds with pictures of missing Daley.

That was when I saw Penelope Rideout’s bright yellow Beetle parked across the street and ahead, ragtop up, a light slick of fog on the windows.

Well, now.

What brings you here on this late-summer night?

A few minutes later she came around the corner of El Camino Real. Opposite side of Del Mar, slowly walking toward her car, hugging herself against the cool, looking through the storefront windows. Skinny jeans and white sneakers, a black cowl-neck sweater, hair loose and curled by the damp. The small white purse over her shoulder.

She stopped in front of the first store she came to, put both hands to the glass, and pressed her face up close. It was a touristy T-shirt shop, closed. She spent some time looking into the dark store. More than I would have. Maybe she liked the humorous shirts.

No. Not looking for shirts, I thought. She’s doing what I was doing — looking for her sister.

From across the avenue she came toward me, lingering window to window, door to door. The Seagull Café was open and Penelope went in. I watched her through the glass, picking her way along the booths with a frankly accounting air, looking for something specific. She disappeared into the dining room, then came back into view as she approached the cashier. Asked questions. Most of the answers were headshakes or no’s. She pointed. To the 7-Eleven? Held out her phone. More headshakes and no’s, but also concern. Penelope stepped aside so a customer could pay. She scanned the dining room while she waited. When the cashier was free again Penelope asked her more questions and I could see some annoyance in the woman’s face.

Penelope came out, pocketed her phone, snugged the cowl, and continued. Measured, purposeful. If the business was open she went in. If not, she stared through the windows. Stared long and patiently. As if she could draw out the object of her desire with the desire itself. The humble seed of hope, I thought. The same seed that had brought me here.

She worked past me without a glance in my direction, down Avenida del Mar, crossed just before the library, and started back my way. Went into the coffee place, came out a few minutes later with steam trailing out the lid hole. The optometrist, closed. The yogurt shop, open. Penelope through the window glass, interrogating a young man who looked eager to help but kept pursing his lips, shaking his head. He looked at her phone pictures and shrugged. Seemed to offer her a yogurt, which she declined.

I watched her approach, but she didn’t look my way. My truck windows are almost illegally dark. Her face looked tired and drawn. Hugging herself again. By the time she walked into Mongkut Thai, she was directly behind me. I could see her in my oversized sideview mirror, starting in on a hostess with a colorful brocade dress and a welcoming smile.

I watched them in the mirror, the hostess’s no-longer-smiling face and Penelope’s backside as she asked her questions. I wanted to go help her, but that seemed like a crude intrusion. I felt sneaky and ashamed sitting there in the dark, watching my client struggle. Wearing out her luck against the odds. Pressing her hope so hard it began to dull. That was my job. But I didn’t move. Just watched her and the hostess, oddly proportioned in my mirror, conversing in the angled half-light, half-dark lobby. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

A moment later she was crossing Del Mar again, an easy trot to avoid the traffic, heading toward her cute yellow convertible.

I followed her a few cars back to the I-5 ramp off El Camino Real, then south. She drove at exactly the speed limit, middle lane if it was open, signaled her changes. Always a pleasure to tail a model citizen.

She cruised past San Onofre and through Camp Pendleton along the fog-dusted Pacific. Past the dark hills and the shining hospital and into Oceanside, where I expected her to exit for home. Where I would leave off and let her return to her domicile unfollowed.

But she continued south, all the way to Encinitas. Wound her way toward the Cathedral by the Sea, where Daley had been showered with attention by the youth minister whose gender Penelope had somehow gotten wrong.

I let her get some distance, watched her pass the church’s sign on Matilija, signal, and come to a complete stop at King’s Road. Turned and continued toward the church.

I followed to the first rise and pulled off the road. The coastal brush thumped and scratched at my truck as I squeezed in. Got my night-vision binoculars from the console and shouldered open the door, my cracked rib shrieking. Pressed my way through the buckwheat and manzanita to the top of the rise.

In the shorn fog stood the Cathedral by the Sea. Shapeless but graceful. Walls of marble and wood snugged together by shiny stainless-steel cables. The upswept copper roof. Outdoor and inside lights on. Double doors open wide. Through my field glasses I saw Pastor Reggie Atlas standing in the doorway, a man and a woman coming out, stopping to say goodbye to him, all cast in eerie green sniper’s light.