Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

I nodded.

“The girl has run away!” said Dick. “What’s it matter if she’s Penelope’s sister or daughter?”

“What matters are her blithe evasions of truth,” said Liz.

Then Frank: “ I like Penelope.”

“Jeez,” said Liz. “Talk about a union.”

She quaffed her drink and reached for the pitcher but Frank beat her to it, poured her a fresh martini, and cast her a questioning look.

“She’s a lovely person,” said Dick.

“She’s full of shit,” said Grandma. “Don’t let her touch you again, Roland.”

“ Let her touch you, Roland. It’s time. She’s like Justine in some ways.”

“She’s not fit to lick Justine’s parakeet dish,” said Liz.

“Justine had a parakeet?”

Liz: “God.”

“And what exactly is a parakeet dish?”

Violet lurched up and excused herself to go boil the ravioli. She swayed some on the way to her casita, looking back over her shoulder before going inside. Liz marched off to get the salad. Dick gave me a “What’s gotten into them?” shrug and headed to roast the vegetables he invariably burned. Burt and Frank set the table and Triunfo trotted off toward the pond.

I sat and wondered what Penelope Rideout was doing just now. If her ears were on fire. And if so, what she would make of this Judgment of the Irregulars. I thought she’d have some zesty words for them. More darkly, I wondered where Daley was, and who was holding the keys to her cell.

Dinner was very good. Violet’s pasta was stuffed with portobello mushrooms, pork, or duck; Dick’s vegetables were just black enough; Liz’s salad was her usual bounty, with extra beets because she knows I like them.

The conversation turned lighter when Violet animatedly told about sometimes having the same dreams as her younger sister, on the same night at approximately the same time, which led her to speculate that dreams — like luck — were simply invisible things that you fell into. So why couldn’t two people fall into the same dream at the same time, especially if they were sleeping in the same room?

Frank had good news — he’d landed another weekly landscape job in Fallbrook, for a total of three days a week in addition to the three he was working here on Rancho de los Robles. “No more Saturdays I will be sleeping late,” he said. He had purchased an “almost new” bicycle to get to work. Bikes are a tough way to get around in these parts. Fallbrook is a sprawling little town, lots of hills to climb and some fast traffic to negotiate.

You could see Frank and his Central American brethren from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — mornings just before seven and afternoons just after three — pedaling to and from their labors. They were compact men, sometimes just boys, always wearing long pants and work boots — never athletic shoes — and always long-sleeved shirts, absolutely tucked in, their belts wide and their faces dark in the shade of their hats. Frank told us, as he had before, that his wages were for his return to Salvador to avenge the death of his father, and to save his family from the violence of the MS-13 gangsters who terrorized the entire village.

He said all this with a pleasantly matter-of-fact expression. Frank seems to be both guileless and fearless. I wonder what good can come of his small-arms combat training with Burt. I’ve heard them talking about flights to El Salvador, the physical layout of the village of Puerto el Triunfo — Frank’s hometown — and how easy it is to buy quality weapons in El Salvador. Thanks in part to the United States military and CIA involvement there in the 1980s. Thousands of weapons left over from the post-Somoza days, many of which had found their way into the hands of the Mara Salvatrucha — MS-13. It was hard to reconcile Frank’s plans for bloody revenge with the bright-eyed innocence of his eighteen-year-old’s face. I wish I could tell him that a young refugee from American violence, willing to work six days a week and stay out of trouble, might find his way into a legal stay in this country. But the chances of that are small and, at last check, getting smaller.

“Back to the matter at hand,” said Liz. “We’re all just hoping you’ll look before you leap with this Penelope woman.”

“I’d leap,” said Dick.

“You dismay me, honey.”

“Can I say something?” asked Violet. Which struck me as funny, because Violet was always talking anyway. However, she paused to take another drink from her martini, and Frank couldn’t resist.

“Penelope is muy bonita ,” he said with a boyish grin.

Violet: “What I’d like to say is—”

“Roland still hasn’t gotten his heart back from Justine!” Dick boomed. “And it’s time, Roland. More than time. It’s okay , Grandson. Justine has already forgiven you for moving on. Mark my words.”

“How far will you go to miss a point?” Liz said. “Roland can’t simply surrender to a low-quality person because she catches his eye! He can’t build a future with a manipulating liar. And, Frank ? You should learn that men are not crows. You can’t have every shiny little thing you see.”

He smiled uncertainly at her. Triunfo returned from the pond, dripping and pleased.

Violet downed her drink and poured another.

Burt stood. “I want to thank you all for this wonderful evening.”

“It was nice, wasn’t it?” asked Liz.

“Roland,” said Burt, lifting his glass to me, “you’ll do the right thing with regard to Ms. Rideout. You always do. Doing the right thing is your gift. And your curse.”

“Violet,” said Dick, “you’re awfully quiet all of a sudden.”

Violet sat upright, back straight, hands resting on the table, tears running down her face. Silence. She looked at us in a clockwise rotation, locking eyes with each one of us before moving on. She looked as if she were about to be executed.

“I wanted to say that I have come to love you all very much. You have accepted me, and you have been of good humor with my incessant yapping and nervous tics. Roland, you let me move into casita four without really knowing anything about me.

“Liz plays tennis with me. Frank has shown me some very wonderful Salvadoran recipes. Dick has shown interest in my future. And Burt — in some way I can’t quite explain — I know you have my back.”

Burt sat. The hush was heavy.

“But I’ve been dishonest with you,” Violet said. “And I want to stop that right now. You all talk about lying, and the truth, and how we go forward. You judge Penelope by what she says about her past. We all judge her by that. It’s all the evidence we have to go on.”

She wiped her eyes and continued, voice cracking and tears running off her chin. “My name is Melinda Day and I grew up in Santa Barbara. I come from a well-to-do family and I’ve been advantaged in every material way. I went to Stanford, not Southern Illinois University. I do fly for the airlines, though — that much is true.

“I was all set to be married in June of last year, to my longtime boyfriend, Brandon. But the previous October... we went to the concert in Las Vegas. To celebrate... And we were there, standing with our arms around each other, I was telling Brandon about this famous writer who lived down the hill from us in Montecito and only wore red athletic shoes everywhere he went, even with a tuxedo... and when I stopped talking I heard these pops coming from behind me, from the sky, and I turned and couldn’t see anything and people started screaming and running and Brandon slammed into me. All his weight. Pulled me down... His shirt was bloody. And some people helped me drag him behind this low wall and I lay down there with him, got all scrunched up close together like we were sleeping, and he said to run. He told me to run. Then he stopped breathing. I did not run. I did not run.