“Two people died out there at Sycamore Flats yesterday,” says Furlong. “Overdoses. I saw one of them give up the ghost, flopping around in the dirt like a fish. But then, to balance the deaths, two women gave birth, too. A boy and a girl, born in their own drug-riddled Garden of Eden with an acid-rock soundtrack and Tim Leary droning away on stage. From what I hear they’re healthy, too — the newborns.”
“I missed all that.”
“It happened after dark. Got crazy. Ten heat strokes for the day, two rattlesnake bites. Three officer assaults. We arrested a hundred and twenty-eight people. This morning I lugged nine of them off to the juvenile court in Santa Ana, which will process them into Juvenile Hall. Which is exactly where you’ll be if you don’t get me my things. Be smart. Be careful. The Brotherhood of Eternal Nonsense is not your friend, Matt. They’re criminals, smuggling drugs into Laguna from all over the world and selling them to kids. Look what they did to your mom. Julie wouldn’t have fallen, or jumped off that ledge, if she wasn’t too messed up to think straight. You know that. So, do the right thing, partner.”
“I’m not your partner.”
“I’ll expect your call tomorrow or sooner. I’m pulling for you and Julie. I wish she’d have stayed at the Jolly Roger.”
“Me too.”
“I busted Grail at Sycamore Flats before he could scamper away. He said there wasn’t any LSD on the invites. Said the crowd hysteria was set off by rumors, fanned by the police. He said nothing that happened was because of acid. The violence was all from us. He made bail this morning. Cash. He’s back in Dodge already.”
“Well, you can prove if there was acid on the invites or not.”
“We already have.”
A hard look at Matt, as if to remind him of his standing as a possible felon.
“I don’t like you trying to make me steal from people I know. You stand here trying to make me commit a crime while Jazz is out there, held by men doing who knows what to her.”
“I need the tomatoes, toffees, and the fancy Tibetan Book of the Dead.”
“What if I get caught?”
“Explain that you like candy and valuable books. I heard you’re going door-to-door, asking about Jasmine.”
Matt nods. “You should be, too.”
“She’ll turn up.”
“Turn up like Bonnie?”
Furlong’s casual tone angers Matt. He’s not doing jack shit to find his sister. To Furlong, it’s all Johnny Grail and Bonnie Stratmeyer. He doesn’t even believe that Matt saw Jazz in the fog on Third Street. Or got a terrified call from her.
Another long look from the sergeant. What did cops do before Ray-Bans to keep you from seeing their eyes?
“Can you give me any more information on Bonnie?” asks Matt, expecting none, now that FBI is involved.
“The FBI still can’t identify the drugs that were in her.”
“How did they get in her?”
Furlong considers. “Through a fine gauge hypodermic needle between her toes. The Bureau has been pretty open with us. Their general consensus is that Bonnie had been recently drugged and restrained. The ankle bruises came from some kind of soft shackle. The ligature marks on her neck, too.”
“Restrained, like tied up?”
“They’re not sure what with.”
Matt tries to process this new information. Add it to the fresh water in her lungs and the serious blow to the top of her head. Add it to Bonnie being with Cavore at Sapphire Cove, and with DeWalt at the LA Moves Happenings, and the Vortex of Purity.
These jagged facts seem like pieces from different puzzles.
And they’re pieces of Jasmine’s puzzle too.
“What happened to Bonnie and what’s happening to my sister are related.”
“That’s a big stretch.”
“There’s a connection.”
“We’re doing our best on both cases.”
“Do more. They’re not cases, they’re people.”
“You help me, I help you,” says Furlong. “Think about my offer. Oh, I saw your dad early yesterday, walking into the Jolly Roger.”
38
Barreling downhill down Bluebird on his bike, Matt almost gets airborne. He’s shirtless — as usual in summer — and the empty, sweat-drenched carrier vest billows and provides lift. And cools him like a radiator. Air-cooled, he thinks. Like the Westfalia but faster. He fishtails the Heavy-Duti north onto Coast Highway.
A moment later he kickstands the bike up in front of Mystic Arts World, runs his hands through his sweaty, really-getting-long hair, and walks in.
Busy. Neither Christian nor Johnny are there, but Hamsa Luke is, and he whispers to Matt that Johnny left something in the office for him. Matt feels the long shadow of Judas in his heart.
Luke raises his fist and the Hamsa eye studies Matt. The good eye that protects you from the evil eye.
“You look like something that just crawled onto dry land for the first time,” Luke says. “Like that newspaper bag is the obsolete gills that your lungs have evolved from.”
“No wonder I’m so hungry.”
“Top drawer of the office desk,” he says quietly. “Johnny said to go right in.”
Matt reads the note from Graiclass="underline"
Call Sungaard. He wants you to talk to some friends of his about the surfboards.
Matt puts it in his wallet and sits back down in Johnny’s swiveling wheeled chair.
His heart speeds.
What he is about to do here — or not do — is more complicated than thou shalt not steal. It’s not only about theft, it’s also about betrayal, and about preserving himself and his sister and his mom. It’s about contradictions and irreconcilable differences. He looks to the bookshelf, where the Holy Bible defends the button to the Bat Cave.
And he asks God, what do I do?
Waits. Waits more.
Tells himself there’s plenty of time but he knows there isn’t.
Then he’s standing at the book shelf, the Holy Bible in his hand, peering through the shadows to the steel button within. He listens intently for Hamsa Luke.
Consult God himself, he thinks. Ask your question directly.
Again he asks what to do, then opens the Holy Bible to a random chapter.
Ezekieclass="underline"
“Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it, and break its staff of bread and send famine upon it and cut off from it man and beast, even if these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, says the Lord God.”
Not exactly sure if that applies, Matt thinks.
Kings:
“Now King Solomon loved many foreign women: the daughter of Pharaoh, and Moabite, Ammonite, E’domite, Sidonian and Hittite women...”
Matt doesn’t think this is his answer either.
John:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way that man is a thief and a robber...”
According to John I’m fucked, Matt thinks.
Philippians 2:
“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”
But that’s a maybe.
He closes the book and presses the button. Bows his head while listening for Hamsa Luke, while waiting for God to just plain answer.
Waits.
Steps into the Bat Cave, hits the lights, sets the Holy Bible back in its place.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead volumes are shelved together and easy to see. The embossed gold letters glimmer even behind the plastic wrap. He’d forgotten how heavy it is. He drops it into the depths of his newspaper bag, rearranges the books on the shelf to close the gap. Then bags a box of the Languedoc Toffees from France.