Т Паркер - Where Serpents Lie

“You two have a wonderful day,” he said.

“Thanks,” said the girl.

“We will,” said the mom. She looked at the old man fondly, and me a little guardedly, then put her hand on her daughter’s back and guided her down the walk.

“That’s a lovely age,” he said.

“Um-hm.”

“Going live, eh?”

“I’d like to pay up and get the hell out of here, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, I don’t touch it. Just be on your way down the sand now. When you get to the wall with the peace signs on it, set your treasure on the rock that looks like an engorged member. You can’t miss it. I call it cock rock. Keep walking and don’t look back. When you get to the cement stairs, take them up to Coast Highway. Don’t look back from there, either. We’ll take care of everything else. Just a second, Mal.”

He lifted the camera and snapped a couple more shots of me.

I bumped past him rudely and jumped off the boardwalk into the sand. I had him in my mind and I’d come back for him when the time was right — a week from now, a month, a year. I’d come back for him: guaranteed, absolutely, without doubt. And I’d come back for the perv in the bushes at Moulton Creek, too. A hundred yards south I hit the wall with the peace signs, and saw the outcropping of rocks. Sure enough, one of the formations nearest the sandstone cliff looked something like a penis, if you used your imagination a little, if you had an imagination like Cleveland’s. I looked around. Some boogie boarders out over the reef. Some sunbathers south fifty yards. A boy flew a kite with a green dinosaur on it. I set the shopping bag down on cock rock and continued down the sand. When I got to the stairway leading up to PCH I took the steps three at a time and arrived on the highway just a few seconds later, with my pulse throbbing hard in my neck and my heart aching to administer justice to Bamboo Man, Bongo Man and Cleveland. I headed north two blocks, then jumped somebody’s fence and crept along to the back where his yard overlooked the water. I parted the palm fronds like an explorer and looked down at the beach.

I could see the rock but the bag was gone. No obvious suspects. Nobody at all.

So I went back out to PCH and ducked into a taco joint. I ordered up a shot and a beer to go with lunch. I ate the tacos and felt a little sick. Then I ordered up two more drinks. There. When I came out the sunlight was golden and slower and all things possessed the unique specifics assigned by the Maker in an age more graceful than ours. I watched my shoes advance below me and believed they were guided by moral feet.

I hustled back down to Main Beach but Bongo Man, Cleveland and my bag were all gone.

Melinda’s home — my ex-home — was cool inside, redolent with the smells of Mel and Penny and Moe. Moe rubbed against my leg as I stood on the hardwood floor of the living room and looked back out the front window to the lawn, where the FOR SALE had its back to me, and I wondered what had led Melinda to list the place. Money? I doubted that — she had some savings, and I had made it clear I would continue as an investor should things not work out between us. Things clearly were not, and I was temporarily without a job, but she knew I’d be good for the money if she could hold on a few months. Didn’t she? Even if the mortgage was that big a problem she could always get a roommate. No, I thought, it wasn’t that. All I could come up with was that she and Penny were too traumatized by my accusal to even stay in a home they had once shared with me. I wondered at the depth of the wound I had laid open in them — in the wound that Jordan Ishmael, to be accurate, had laid open in them — and realized that I really had no understanding of its gravity. Had he even thought it through? How could his despising me justify the pain he brought to them? It was beyond me. I did not understand. It was more than sad to see that for sale sign there, a sign that said to all passersby: this life failed, these people ruined, this house ready for the next suckers eager to try.

“I don’t know, Moe,” I mumbled.

He rolled over onto his back and wagged bis tail. My wasted bird dog, reduced to a shameless household pet. That’s what happens when you don’t hunt a hunter. I guess I couldn’t blame that on Jordan Ishmael.

I knelt and pet him for a while, thinking about the life I had once had between these walls. A woman who loved me, a girl who had come to like me, a job, a dog. And as if my sudden passion for Donna Mason was not enough to ruin all that I had had here, there were the photographs that exploded the world all around me — with Melinda and Penny and everyone else I knew in it. And that, I could and did blame on Ishmael.

By two I was back in my apartment, dealing again with I. R. Shroud.

I. R. Shroud: Reports all good. Payment received.

Mal: Don’t appreciate the Kodak moments one fucking little bit. Very disappointed by you.

I. R. Shroud: For my peace of mind, TN, OCSD. We want you so badly to be one of us. Took great trust to show you our faces.

Mal: Point taken but unhappy still. Perhaps some shots of you would level the playing field.

I. R. Shroud: Riotous. Use legal letter envelope for balance. Hundreds only. Place envelope in paperback book, one-third of envelope visible. Embark Green Line Metro Rail from Norwalk station on first train after 4 P.M.. today. Board last car only. Prepurchase transfer to Blue. Further instructions to come.

Mal: Am wanting results quickly.

I. R. Shroud: First things first.

Mal: Will wait with patience.

I. R. Shroud: As do all good patients. Gone.

In my little blue notebook I noted the exact times that our conversation began and ended. I was afraid to look forward to the day when that information would help hang The Horridus, but I allowed myself a mirthful glance into the future anyway.

For the first time since being charged I strapped on my shoulder rig and .45 and put a light windbreaker over it to hide it from the real cops.

I stood on the Norwalk Green Line platform, 4:02 P.M., a paperback copy of The New Centurions in my hand, with one-third of a legal-sized envelope protruding from between pages 122 and 123. The May afternoon was bright and almost hot; it felt about eighty. There was just enough breeze to blow the smog out to Riverside. In the west the sun seemed to be sinking very slowly, as if it didn’t want to miss the sunset. The train arrived almost silently and I walked to the last car before getting on.

I found a seat, looked at no one and gazed out the window. The train accelerated oddly — more a sensation of brakes being let off than of power being applied. First I was sitting still, then I was going fast. In the faint reflection in the window before me I saw a mustached man in a cap and sunglasses. And I couldn’t help but remember the old Naughton, the suntanned, happy young father snorkel diving with his kid off of Shaw’s Cove in Laguna, with the sun on his back as he floated in blue water and watched through his mask as his boy dove down to claim a shell from the cream-colored sand.

I knew that I had changed and fallen. But exactly how and exactly why, well, these things seemed beyond me. I felt like I had grabbed hold of a dream that had moved along nicely for a while, like a speedboat on the surface of the sea, only to submerge quickly and without warning, taking my outstretched hand with it while everything precious scattered to the waves and the winds of the surface far above.

West along the Green Line, then: Lakewood, Long Beach, Wilmington, Avalon, Harbor Freeway, Vermont. Before the Crenshaw station a thin young man in a beige suit sat down across the aisle, looking frankly at me, then at the book on the seat next to me. He was thirty, maybe, with glasses and limp blond hair. He had a soft, thoughtful face.