“I came by to see if you want a well-paying job,” she says. “It’s on my parents’ estate in Emerald Bay. It will be hard work. Mahajad told me you’re always hungry and need money.”
“Yes. I am.”
“Dad wants it done tomorrow morning.”
“Do you need two men?” asks Tommy.
“Just one.”
“Well you got a good one,” he says. “This guy chases kidnappers up and down PCH just for fun. Here, front page.”
Tommy hands her a freshly folded and rubber-banded Register. Smiles at her, climbs into his car and drives off.
“I already read it,” says Sara. “Unbelievable that Jazz has been kidnapped in Laguna, and that — according to her phone call — she’s being held somewhere right here in town.”
“That’s why I’m door-knocking with Laurel.”
A look. “What a huge labor, going door-to-door like that and dealing with people who may not want to help. Or even be polite.”
“She’s out there, somewhere.”
“You will find her.”
She tosses the unopened afternoon final into Matt’s pile.
“If you live in Emerald Bay,” he says, “why don’t you go to Laguna High?”
“I go to Jokewood, up in Newport. With all the other spoiled rich kids.”
Matt knows of it: Oakwood Academy. Jazz calls it Jokewood, too. Jazz and Sara Eikenberg don’t just look kind of similar, he thinks. They have the same superior attitude, same sarcastic humor.
“Congratulations on evolving,” he says.
“Thanks. It took a while. I’m not cut out for evolution but the others helped me along. Some of them are spaced out and weird, but mostly they’re alright. At least they want to improve themselves.”
“Did you know Bonnie Stratmeyer?”
“From the photo Happenings and the Vortex. I saw her a couple of times. And then, poof — she was gone.”
“You call them Happenings?”
“The director calls them Happenings. That’s Rene DeWalt. He wanted to call them ‘Be-Ins’ but Timothy Leary has that title all sewn up.”
Matt looks into Sara’s squinting face. There’s something pugnacious about it when she’s not smiling. An inner toughness. Jazz again.
“What kind of job is it?” he asks.
“We cut down twenty big eucalyptus trees on our property. Ground the stumps, too. Eucalyptus are shallow-rooted, so they blow over in Santa Ana winds, and they’re a fire hazard. Dad hates waste, so he wants the log sections to line the driveway. The driveway is long and steep, and some of the log sections are, well, sizeable. He wants the biggest ones down at the bottom by the gate, for a dramatic welcome. Then, the smaller ones up top. Dad doesn’t want a tractor chewing up the roses and groundcover. The tree crew was bad enough. He wants it done by hand. We have a wheelbarrow.”
“Why me?”
“When I told Mahajad I needed a worker, he suggested you. Told me the hungry always work the hardest.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen bucks.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“Not really. Dad can afford it. You’ve probably heard of D.L. Eikenberg Homes.”
Matt certainly has. And everyone knows that Emerald Bay is one of the best and most expensive neighborhoods in Laguna. The job doesn’t sound too hard, and he has a pair of decent work gloves.
“Sara, how old are you?”
“Sixteen and a half. Got my license six months ago and Dad bought me a new Porsche.”
“I got mom’s hippie van.”
“I really dig those.”
He’s about to say she could drive it sometime, but the Westfalia is for him and Laurel, right?
Moby Cop comes to a stop in Matt’s driveway and the driver’s window goes down. Furlong studies Matt and Sara from behind his aviators.
“Stupid,” he says to Matt. “You should never have talked to the press. Now those kidnappers — if that’s in fact what you saw — will keep low and hide their van out of sight. You helped them.”
“I didn’t say the color of the van.”
“Come here.”
Matt goes to Moby Cop, checks the back for prisoners but it’s empty. He looks up at the still-seated sergeant.
“You disappoint me, Matt. I give you trust and money and a way to do the right thing. I am concerned for your family, whether you know it or not. But you do this. After I order you not to.”
“I think it was best, sir. For Jasmine. They threw her into that van like she was a toy. It was terrible and people in Laguna should know about it. But you don’t even believe that happened. I have no patience left for you or your department.”
“There are places for boys like you. You do not want to see one.”
He looks past Matt to Sara, throws Moby Cop into reverse, and backs out.
31
Early dawn on Emerald Bay, the water not emerald at all, but a gray mirror in the new light. The morning is cool and the beach homes wait in fog, their windows throwing faint reflections back at Matt Anthony, who waits high on a hillside inside the Eikenberg gate.
He pulls on his leather work gloves. He’s got coffee in a thermos, two donuts from Dave’s in his stomach, a simmering anger at Furlong and at himself, for taking this valuable time away from his search for Jasmine. No sign of Sara, who buzzed him in through the intercom, but the wheelbarrow she mentioned is right here by the driveway gate. He wonders if he can even use it on a slope this steep.
Matt takes another sip of coffee, crosses himself like in the movies, and gets to work.
First order of business from here is to get the smaller logs to the top of the drive, and the big ones to the bottom. He picks up two of the smaller ones, and damned heavy they are, but he clinches one under each armpit and trots uphill. It’s like carrying car batteries or cocker spaniels and his legs feel the weight before he’s halfway up.
He makes it to the top.
Drops the logs, then works them upright into the dirt. Two down!
Then he pushes one very big log off its flat sawn edge, aims it downhill and gives it a push with his foot. It wobbles, then straightens, gravity kicking in, then Matt’s chasing it down the slope, guiding it with short alternating kicks like a soccer player, dodging the Victorian streetlamps and log piles and barely keeping up with the solid, barreling thing. It’s like trying to control a hog with your feet.
Nearing the gate Matt turns the animal with a strong kick and watches it angle hard right, skid downslope, stall, and stop. He brakes but catches his heel and goes down, sledding through a bed of eucalyptus leaves on his butt. He stands, panting. Still twenty feet to get that log into position. Advancing in a mood of combat, he squats and flips the log flat-end to flat-end, laterally downslope, and finally into place.
He stands over log number three as something conquered. He’s breathing hard. His whole body feels used, just like it does high up on Bluebird every day, after slinging his last paper. But he knows he can’t move the big logs downhill in this way, and not get hurt.
He takes a moment to look out at the Pacific, already a deep indigo blue in the weakening fog. Smells coastal sage and, of course, eucalyptus. Hears doves hoo-hooing in a sycamore tree and thinks how cool it would be if his mother and father were still married, and he and Kyle and Jazz could help them build a house right exactly here, where they could wake up to this every morning. He could fish down there where only the residents can go. Get a dog.
He loads the wheelbarrow with four smaller logs and grinds his way uphill on the smooth concrete of the drive. It’s slow going, all back and legs, and he stops twice to rest. His legs feel heavy but powerful.