In a blink he’s back in the store, which is even busier than a few minutes ago. Luke is ringing up a handsome ceramic-and-bamboo Nichols hookah and five ten-packs of incense for an astonishing $39.
“Everything groovy, Matt?”
“Yeah, it’s cool.”
Customers are already heading into the meditation room for tonight’s introductory meditation sessions guided by Vortex of Purity Enlightener Don Stanwood.
“Busy for a weekday,” says Matt.
“Yeah, and still early.”
A few blocks down at the Post Office, Matt uses the key supplied by Furlong to open the commercial-sized P.O. bin into which The Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Languedoc Toffees easily fit. He removes a handful of junk mail advertisements — an alibi supplied by Furlong — in case Matt runs into anybody he knows.
Next, he stops off at the GTE building on Third to use the pay phones. Sungaard gives him a time and place for tomorrow morning, right here in Laguna, be up at the water tower in Bluebird Canyon, nine o’clock. Sungaard wants Matt to talk to some friends about the Hessians. Take just a few minutes, says Sungaard, an edge to his voice.
By seven Matt has pedaled to the Dodge City packing house with the idea of buying a jar of Laguna Sunshine stewed tomatoes. Nobody around. Matt sets two cans into each side of the paper carrier, tucks some money under a canning jar wrench, then walks his bike to his mom’s little red barn on Roosevelt Lane.
He unslings his now heavier paper carrier and locks it in the Westfalia. It’s getting near sunset and there’s a rosy glow over Dodge City, and a fragrant scent of burning marijuana and canyon scrub. Random cars and trucks up and down Roosevelt, as usual. It’s hot and stuffy inside so he leaves the door open.
Water is running in his mom’s room.
In the middle of the cable-spool table stands a liquor bottle. Even from this distance Matt recognizes it as Bruce Anthony’s brand of whiskey, Colonel Givens. Beside it are two white take-out bags from Husky Boy.
A big suitcase stands behind one of the chairs. There are two smaller carrying cases beside it. Matt recognizes them.
The water has stopped running, and Bruce Anthony walks in from Julie’s room.
39
It’s been six years since Matt has seen his father, minus the four days when Bruce took the kids on day trips for four consecutive summers to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, the Alligator Farm, Disneyland again, racking up thousands of truck miles only to vanish back into his world for another year.
“Good to see you, Dad.”
“Thanks for keeping a window cracked for me. I don’t deserve it.”
They meet in a brief, stiff hug.
“Food and drink on the table, son. We have much to discuss.”
He returns from the kitchen with two mason jars and they take bar stools across the spool from each other. The main room light fixture hangs directly above, throwing a warm incandescent light on them.
Bruce pushes a white Husky Boy bag across the table, then an empty mason jar.
“Pour some bourbon if you’d like.”
“I’ve never tried it.”
“You still like fries over onion rings?”
“Right, Dad.”
Bruce pours some bourbon, lifts his mason jar to Matt, then sips.
“Son, I came here to find Jazz. What has happened to her here is absolutely predictable and unacceptable. I will not let my daughter become a victim of these times and this place. And let her become a symbol of all that has gone wrong in our republic.”
“No,” says Matt. “We can’t.”
“She’s been consorting with the scum of the earth. We’re going to hose that scum into the sea until we find her.”
Bruce Anthony sips his bourbon. Matt senses the hardness in him that has always been there. Hardness, and the conviction that he is right. Matt feels the anger coming off his father just in the way he moves the liquor to his mouth. It can get to be a roar, he thinks, the anger. Both the hardness and the anger seem stronger now, or at least more obvious. He wants to know what his father has been doing for the last six years.
Matt pours a finger of the Colonel Givens, feels the sharp reach of fumes as he brings the mason jar to his nose. Wow. Sets it down.
“Based on what I know, she’s somewhere here in Laguna,” says Bruce. “It sounds like we’re up against at least three experienced individuals — the men you saw abduct her that night. Also, we have Jordan Cavore, Rene DeWalt, and Mahajad Om to consider, as possible vectors between Jazz and Bonnie Stratmeyer. If those connections hold, then we’re dealing with murderers.”
“How do you know what Jazz was doing, and Bonnie?”
“I still have friends in the sheriff’s department. I’ve been in touch with Darnell and McAdam. Good people.”
“Furlong?”
“Less so.”
Matt has long assumed that his father knew of Furlong’s rebuffed advances on his mother, but he’s never directly asked and isn’t about to. Furlong versus Father is nothing Matt wants to witness.
Bruce sips from his mason jar, eyes locked on Matt’s across the spool table. His father’s eyes are gray, set deep under hard dark brows. His hair is wavy and blond, like Matt’s. It’s surprisingly long now, much longer than Matt has ever seen it, almost to his shoulders. The hippies are winning him over, Matt thinks.
But not completely. Bruce’s sideburns are long, wide and razor-straight at the bottom. His mustache has the Earp droop, Wyatt Earp being one of his heroes. The legendary lawman/gunfighter/gambler had actually lived not far from here, in San Diego, in his later years. Matt remembers his parents taking the family to the site of Earp’s San Diego brothel downtown for Sunday brunch. Bruce and Julie had had cocktails and laughed and the food was great and Matt liked all the photos of the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson and the hard-faced ladies of the house. But the drive back to Laguna — parents up front in the Country Squire, Matt and Jasmine behind them, Kyle commanding the entire rear section — erupted in a brief but heated mom-and-dad screaming match. The radio got turned way up and Matt remembers little that was said, but he remembers Julie’s bared teeth point-blank to Bruce’s ear, and Bruce, ramrod straight in the driver’s seat, both hands on the wheel, guiding the great station wagon north, slapping Julie on the cheek with his open hand. The crack. The radio-filled silence between Encinitas and home.
Now, eleven years later, looking at his father across the table, Matt repeats Bruce’s favorite Wyatt Earp saying.
“Fast is fine, but accuracy is final.”
Bruce smiles. “We’ll get to that in a minute.”
They eat the Husky Boy double cheeseburgers, Matt the fries, Dad the onion rings. Chocolate shakes. Matt sniffs the bourbon again. Bruce sips twice and pours another. He’s wearing a white Western shirt with snap buttons, tucked in, sleeves rolled up. Jeans and boots. Sitting across the round spool table with the bourbon before him and the light directly overhead, he reminds Matt of a saloon gambler.
“What have you been doing all these years for work, Dad?”
“Oh, that. Well, as you know, I left this cutesy place for the sheriff’s department in Clay County, Texas. Which was somewhat on account of lovely Sharon in payroll having family there. You never met Sharon. Just as well, we didn’t get on. Clay County and I didn’t either, so I worked the Odessa oil-patch boom-to-bust, then proceeded to the Tulsa PD. Talk about a law-and-order city. I had me a sweetie named Betsy but she turned out to be not so sweet after all. Then El Paso PD. They had me buying heroin undercover from Mexican poppy growers. That was one helluva scene.”