Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

Penelope told me that Daley had been so shocked by her true bio/history that she had spent four days rocketing between belief, denial, and outrage. Threw a lot of things. The emerging mother and daughter had spent hours hiking the rolling hills of Rancho de los Robles, and hours in casita three cooking meals, listening to music, talking, arguing, crying, and remembering.

“My blood ran cold when she told me she’d sometimes wished that Reggie Atlas was her father,” Penelope said. “That he reminded her of someone wise and kind and probably a lot like the father she never knew.”

I’d wondered along those same lines: Might an unknowing daughter feel an instinctual recognition of her father? A blood instinct? Even dimly? And, believing that her father was another, what name would the daughter give that curious, strong, instinctual pull? Might she name it affection? Curiosity? Attraction, even? Might she pursue it? Was Reggie Atlas counting on blood instinct? Had he been using it against her?

“And, of course,” said Penelope through the static following me down Highway 395, “I have to forgive myself for taking a man’s life. Self-defense, yes. But still a man. A man whom I as a child once adored. Father of my daughter. A husband and father of his own children. My soul feels stained, Roland. I hope it fades some. The stain. I hope Daley can truly forgive me for what I did.”

“He came there to kill us both.”

“I know. But what I did changes everything about me. I think you know what I mean.”

Penelope went on to tell me she’d read to her daughter from some very long journals she had kept. She told me she’d waited a lifetime to do this. She told me that when the “waves of truth” had finally broken on Daley enough times, Daley surrendered her doubt and began to accept who she was and where she’d come from and the idea that, in some ways, she would be starting her life over again as a different person. With a different history and family. With a reviled father and a world eager to invade her past and exploit her privacy. Was there an upside? Penelope said the last few days had been better. And that Melinda and Daley had become close quickly, Melinda’s violent loss helping Daley handle her own wrenching changes.

Speaking for herself, Penelope said she was “elated and exhausted.” She and Daley would be returning home to Oceanside soon. Between Penelope and me there was much to be said, but little of it could be done by phone. She asked how the fishing was. Then ventured that she was glad her “second virginity” had ended with me.

Burt told me Connor Donald had been killed in a shoot-out with police outside the Newport Beach offices of Historical Review. On the link he sent me, Historical Review spokesperson Laurel Davis — the cool, bejeweled beauty who had harangued me at Alfred Battle’s White Power Hour — said that Donald was a security guard who occasionally worked for the Historical Review, and said the Review had no reason to believe he was involved in the Paradise Farm terror plot.

I came home a few days later to bad news: Frank, walking his bike up a narrow, tree-lined road in Fallbrook at the end of his workday yesterday, had been stopped by three MS-13 gangsters. He knew one of them from Puerto El Triunfo — El Diabolico, the kid he’d gone to school with who had connections to the people who had killed Frank’s father. The El Triunfo boys brought greetings from Frank’s two sisters in Salvador. They’d shown Frank machetes and a gun and asked him for eighty dollars to protect the girls. Gabriella was eight and Filomena eleven. Eighty dollars was exactly what he’d made that day, plus a sandwich, an apple, and a bottle of water for lunch. He’d told them he’d pay only this one time. Solo una vez. They had laughed and told him they’d see him here next week, and his old El Triunfo friend had given him back one of the twenties. He’d told Frank that he might want to change his mind about the one-time-only payment, then they had scurried off to their aging black Nissan.

“Thus, Frank has a meeting with them next Friday,” said Burt as we walked down to the patio that evening. “I’ve got some ideas how we should handle that, and Frank agrees.”

He gave me a mischievous but sincere welcome-home smile, leading the way to the palapa on short bowed legs.

The rest of the Irregulars greeted me with a smartphone concerto of the first verse of “Money for Nothing.” This, a common attack on my slowness to make improvements while still collecting the rent on time. There’s some small truth in it. So I stood there and took my medicine while four phones tinnily chimed the song so out of sync I could hardly tell what it was.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

After the Irregulars had drifted off to their casitas, Penelope and I walked the pond in the minor moonlight. The October nights had lost their heat and the damp cool of fall hung around us.

“I’m taking Daley to New York tomorrow, early,” she said. “We have a nonstop out of San Diego.”

“I’ll take you, if you’d like.”

“I’d like. I hope I’m doing the right thing, Roland.”

“My offer stands,” I said. “You both can stay here. Dodge everybody, hang low for a few weeks, then get on with your lives.”

“They want me to do a silhouette interview on 60 Minutes , so nobody can recognize my face. I need to do this one thing, Roland. I need other people to know they don’t have to get raped and hide it forever. No matter how rich and famous and holy the rapers are. Just this one statement, then back to Daley and we’ll figure out our lives.

“Tell your story, Penelope. Daley will be fine here for a few days.”

“She wanted us to do this thing together,” said Penelope. “I wouldn’t let her.”

“Good call,” I said. “She needs to be a girl again. Not a cause.”

I thought of Jake, the young surfer at Old Man’s, who had looked through all of Daley’s inner turmoil and seen simply a cute girl he’d like to hang out with. I thought: She wouldn’t mind being that girl. Not at all.

“Are they going to turn me into a freak show?”

“Well, a show, anyway,” I said. “Just remember it’s your story. You tell it. Don’t let them put words in your mouth.”

“I’ve got plenty of my own words.”

“You’re going to be a busy woman for a while.”

“Yeah, a busy little me.”

I took her hand and rounded the water. Ahead of us, frogs plopped and barn owls screeched on the hunt. A light fog had rolled in, a bit of chill in it.

“You know the best part?” she asked. “I finally get to be a mom to my daughter. We’re going to get to know each other for the first time, as such. Under the banner of truth. I’m going to be a mom, Roland!”

“You’ll be outstanding,” I said.

“Roland? I do have one regret. You only got the stripped-down version of me. You got the base model. I want you to experience the limited edition. The best Penelope Rideout you can stand. Get it?”

“I think I can handle that,” I said.

I like her, too, said Justine.

“I’ll see you early, then,” said Penelope. “Tonight I need to spend some time with Daley.”

Under the palapa we held each other for a silent while, then she set off for casita three. She was wearing the same black sweater as she had the night she’d searched downtown San Clemente so thoroughly — door-to-door — looking for some sign of her daughter. Tonight she had her arms around herself like she had then. Against the chill. Against the world.

Halfway there, she stopped and turned and gave me her hard blue stare. And that awkward wave of hers, part “Hi” and part “See you later.”