Steve Erickson - Rubicon Beach

“No.”

“In this very kitchen. Shot with a gun. By an Arab of some sort. Late one spring night and many people saw it. He bled on the floor and did not die immediately. He aspired to lead his people and at the moment he was shot he was in the throes of triumph, his people had acclaimed him on this very night just outside this very kitchen. Before him, his own brother had led the people, and his brother was another murdered man, and the brother that came before them was a murdered man as well. A whole family of murdered men. They were born in America.”

“America One,” came Wade’s voice from the big shadow, “or America Two?”

I got up off the floor. I stood toe to toe with him and held the knife hard. I held the knife as hard as his eyes held me. “Not America One or America Two,” I said, seething. “Just America. They were born in America.”

Wade licked his lips. “I have to arrest you.”

“Because we have a body here and we have you holding what by all appearances seems to be a murder weapon.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “That’s Ben Jarry over there. You can’t arrest me for murdering Ben Jarry. You’ve already set me free for helping you murder Ben Jarry, remember?”

Wade slowly blinked. “Put your clothes on.” He looked down at my side where I held the knife hard, and he put his hand out, palm open and draped with a white handkerchief. We stared at each other a good half minute before I put the handle of the knife on the white handkerchief. He wrapped the knife and called over Mallory and gave it to him. I put my clothes on. We walked from the hotel kitchen up the stairs into the lobby. I could still see the light of the lounge where the bar was. “There was somebody else here earlier tonight,” I said to Wade, nodding at the light. “Some sort of actor, your height, fiftyish. I talked to him.” Wade lumbered over to the lounge, looked in and came back. “No one I can see but check it out,” he said to Mallory. Check it out, Mallory said to the cop next to him. Wade walked on ahead, and Mallory and another cop led me out into the night, where we followed Wade to a boat down by the beach, where there were still more cops.

They had spotted me taking off with the boatman that evening. They hadn’t picked me up at the time because they wanted to see where I was going and why. They’d lost us in the fog and only when they got the boatman coming back could they make him show them exactly where in Hancock Park he’d dropped me off. You must have made great friends with the little blond hooker, Wade said to my surprise, she wouldn’t tell us shit. They’d been stymied again until they got a report from a schooner that docked in the south harbor with a small boat tied to its tail.

Back in town they took me to the station. It was now nearly dawn. A few cops were standing outside smoking and in the front room a couple of women who did not look as though they worked the lagoon but over by the East Canal were sitting on a bench that ran along the wall. Next to them on the bench a guy was slumped over. Wade talked to the cop behind the desk and then after a few minutes we went through the door down a green hall to a small windowless room. Everyone was exhausted. I should have been exhausted too. Instead everything in me was fired, I couldn’t remember when I had feIt this tired. Perhaps I had never feIt like this, even before prison. I had this ridiculous sense of being in control of everything, I had this feeling of calling all the shots. It was ridiculous because I wasn’t calling any shots at all, it was ridiculous because everyone thought I was out of control. We sat in the small windowless room at a single table with two chairs. I was in one of them and Wade was in the other. Mallory stood by the door and another cop stood in the corner. I sat looking wild and fired; Wade looked exhausted. “Have you settled down now?” he said to me.

“What do you mean?” I looked at the other cops.

“Are you clear in your own head?” he said.

“Everything in me is fired,” I explained. With perfect timing someone knocked on the door, and Mallory opened it. It was the police doctor. He said he wanted to take some blood and a urine sample. Wade said, Fuck that, this man isn’t drugged. “Everything in me is fired,” I explained to the doctor. The doctor had me open my shirt; he took my pulse and put his hand on my head. He turned to Wade and said I was burning up, and I said, What did I tell you.

“I don’t care about that,” Wade said slowly, “this man and I are going to have a talk now.”

“This man should be hospitalized,” said the doctor. He and Wade argued, and that ended with Wade still sitting in his chair and the doctor outside the room and the door locked between them. “Tonight,” Wade said to me, “you’re going to tell all about it.” He was still speaking very slowly but biting the words so hard I could hear the pain in them. “You’re going to tell me who you went to meet in the lagoon tonight and why.”

“A woman,” I said.

“We found a woman,” he said, meaning the blonde, “and nothing happened between you as far as we can tell from what she told us.”

“A different woman.”

“A woman named Janet Dart?”

That confused me. “Who?”

“Janet Dart,” he said. “We know you met her a week ago and we know you went to her place. I told you to stay clear of that woman.”

“She was showing me her pictures. Have you seen them?”

I said, “I thought she was a cop.”

“My understanding of your case,” he whispered, smoldering, “is such as to lead me to conclude you never thought she was a cop. My understanding of your case is such as to lead me to conclude you know why she came here.” He was hot and his face was wet as it was in the grotto that night, but now he didn’t notice it at all. “We know about her connection,” he said. “We know she came here to Los Angeles to see a man who was a member of your political cadre in New York City two and a half years ago. We know he escaped from an upper-annex New York prison seven weeks ago. We know your former political cronies have sent him for you and we’re reasonably certain he’s the one who’s been setting off the underground detonations. My understanding of your case is such as to lead me to conclude you went to the lagoon tonight to meet Janet Dart and perhaps this man, though we’re not sure why. I guess you’re right about one thing, we still can’t quite figure whose side you’re on.”

“Listen,” I said, “that woman’s crazy. She doesn’t care about politics. She’s in love with a guy who doesn’t even know who she is. She’s in love with a face that doesn’t need a light. Check the places with no lights.”

“Did you murder her too?”

“I haven’t murdered anybody.” I looked at him. “You think I murdered the man in the kitchen? What about those other times? On the beach and in the library. What about that.” Wade looked at me incredulously, and suddenly I saw it too. Suddenly I stopped seeing everything my way and saw it his. “Shit,” I said, still looking at him, “I keep forgetting. I keep forgetting you never saw those other times. I keep forgetting I’m the only one who ever saw those other times.”

He leaned back in the chair and waited. “Was it your contact, Cale?”

“It’s Ben Jarry,” I said. “And I did kill Ben Jarry once, as sure as if I had done it with a knife in my hand. But I didn’t kill him tonight.”

Wade didn’t even hear it. “They’ve sent someone for you, very possibly to kill you. Do you understand? I told you to leave that woman alone.” He sat up in the chair. “Stop jerking us around and we can make a case here for self-defense.”

“That would put me on your side for sure, wouldn’t it,” I said.