Matt is craving the organic breakfast muffins in the health food bakery when Grail returns. He’s carrying a ream-sized box.
“This is like totally unreal that you showed up here today, Matt. Talk about Karma. Okay, there’s two hundred and fifty of these things. Enough for every business in town, and some left over. They need to be delivered by tonight, and my prior arrangements just fell through. They’re invitations to our Summer of Eternal Love Experience a week from Sunday. You can save me lots on postage. Just take you a few hours. I’ll pay you five dollars when you’re done.”
Talk about the nick of time!
He opens the box and hands a sheet to Matt. It’s a hot fuchsia background with dizzying Day-Glo green psychedelic letters. A bright orange quarter-sun beams its rays down from the upper left corner, like in a child’s drawing:
“Nice graphic,” Matt says. “It actually makes my eyes hurt.”
Grail gives him a grinding little laugh. “Exactly. I designed it myself to take the eye into another dimension. Like seeing a double-helix that keeps rolling over and over while being lit by a strobe. Plus that incredible sun up in the corner.”
“Free food and live music? Sycamore Flats will be packed.”
“We hope.”
“Does Furlong know about this?”
“Make sure he gets his invite, Matt. All the pigs are welcome!”
Matt loves the idea of this easy money. And the idea that the flyers will take him into the heart of the city where — somewhere — Jasmine’s abductors must be holding her. He might see her, hear her, sense her. Find the connection he needs. She has to be out there, right?
“Okay. I’ll deliver. It’s what I do.”
“Don’t use the mail slots or the federales will come after me. Just slide them under the doors or into the jambs, under the welcome mats, wherever. So cool of you do to this, Matt. So out-of-this-world, boss-Karma cool.”
“You’re welcome, Johnny. Oh, I’d like two of those organic poppy-seed muffins and a small milk.”
Grail goes behind the counter, picks up the pastry tongs. “Yesterday’s stuff, so I’ll discount it,” he says.
Matt sets the coins on the glass, thirty cents, but the muffins will be worth every penny. He’s hungry enough to eat ten of them. He still has fifty-three of his last eighty-three cents, with Johnny Grail’s five dollars coming sometime soon.
And an idea hits him.
Brigit Darnell seems suspicious of Matt’s motives, but she radios Furlong about Matt Anthony’s request to see the sergeant immediately on a matter of “some importance.”
They meet in the gift shop of the Laguna Art Museum on Coast Highway. Matt’s idea. He has spent some hours here, lost in the plein air oils that Laguna is famous for — landscapes and beach scenes, pastoral and pleasing. The watercolors by Millard Sheets and Rex Brandt are terrific too. His sketchbooks are filled with earnest attempts to copy some of this art, though the one he now holds in one hand has only recent drawings.
Furlong leads the way to the upstairs gallery, jangling with each step.
As Matt intended, they’re alone up here.
Furlong speaks quietly. “What.”
Matt hasn’t rehearsed this, so it all comes tumbling out: Diver’s Cove looking for Jazz, the hippie girls blowing smoke in his face and kissing him, the grope, the three guys and the warning and his wallet in the trash, minus his money. He tells Furlong it was close to thirty-five dollars of paper route earnings — not mostly a gift from one of the richest men in Southern California.
“Describe the perpetrators in detail, Matt.”
He does, right down to the red satin cape and the tie-dye duster and the beaded macramé sweater.
“And, that’s not all.” He made one good sketch late last night, of the girl who blew the smoke in his face. He opens the sketchbook and shows Furlong.
“Hmmm. Darnell can take a report and we’ll BOLO them. But there are a lot of drugged-up hippies out there.”
“BOLO?”
“Be on the lookout.”
“I actually was hoping you’d pay me for this information and drawing. This was a robbery on a city beach. I’m an eyewitness victim, and I’ve made a good drawing of one suspect. And — this is important — I know the last name of the man who threatened me.”
Furlong waits, looking down at Matt, his bigness amplified in the cool, clean light of the gallery.
“You said five bucks for good information you can use.”
“About the Brotherhood.”
“These guys had drugs alright. From Michoacan.”
“I’m after bigger fish, Matt.”
“I’ve even half identified one of them. Longton — the leader.”
“If they had a weapon I wouldn’t hesitate.”
“If you pay me for this, I’ve got something else. It relates directly to the Brotherhood.”
“No, Matt. That’s not how it works. What happens is you give me your best information, all of it, and I decide whether it’s worth my money or not. We don’t negotiate first.”
“Then I’ll need to consider this.”
Matt walks away to the stairs, looks down into the stairwell. Then stands before a dazzling triple-perspective Wayne Thiebaud painting. Someday. Then comes back to Furlong, opens his sketchbook again and hands the sergeant one of Grail’s fuchsia-and-Day-Glo-green Summer of Eternal Love invitations.
Furlong stares at it. “Where did you get this?”
“Mystic Arts.”
“I knew nothing about it until now. An experience?”
“I think the invites are going out today.”
“How?”
“The Post Office, I guess.”
“Offers of free sex through the U.S. Mail?”
“It says free love, not sex.” Matt knows he’s digging a hole for himself but all he can do is hope Furlong doesn’t see it.
“What else do you have for me?” Furlong asks quietly.
“That’s it. An authentic eyewitness victim’s account. A sketch of one perpetrator, and the last name of the leader. And an invite to a BEL event in Laguna Canyon you didn’t know about, at which drugs will be all over the place. I lost almost all the money I had last night, Sergeant.”
Furlong gets out his wallet and hands Matt two fives. “Take the sketch to Darnell. I’ll keep the invite. Later today I want a list of the streets you ride on your route, delivering the papers. Leave it with Darnell with the sketch. I may want to find you.”
Matt likes that idea not one bit, but he likes the ten dollars a lot. “Alright.”
Furlong taps two fingers to his lips, which becomes a brief salute.
Late that night Matt finishes delivering Johnny Grail’s flyers. He’s tired and hungry. But Johnny owes him five bucks and Furlong’s ten dollars are in his wallet. He’s had nothing to eat since a skimpy peanut butter and jelly burrito for lunch.
But worse than hunger is his failure to come so much as one inch closer to Jazz, even after delivering those hundreds of flyers all over town. He hasn’t found the elusive connection. Had he actually gotten close to her? He had not sensed her. What’s she doing right now? Does she have enough to eat? Are they hurting her?