“The leader is Erik Staich,” says Bayott. “Is this the man who kicked you?”
Matt nods, feels that pain, fresh in his memory. Erik Staich is a strange-looking man — a square face and a high forehead, a slender neck, prominent cheeks, and pale eyes.
“And what did he say to you, again?” asks Bayott.
“You’re a waste of skin. Okay, surf Nazis. Get the boards in the van.”
“Do you know how they learned you were transporting the surfboards?”
“No,” says Matt. “I was hoping you might come up with that.”
“Did you talk to Johnny Grail or Luke Lucas about the surfboards — Luke is also known as Hamsa Luke, from Mystic Arts World.”
“No. Johnny told me Mr. Sungaard had a job for me. So it’s possible he knew it was the surfboards.”
Matt has a small realization: how loose and trusting the BEL is. The lax things they do. Such as all the MAW employees sharing gossip about customers and each other. Such as Johnny dispatching young people like Jasmine and Matt to make home deliveries to one of the richest men in California, among others. Such as Johnny hiring Matt to deliver LSD-impregnated invitations — Matt is sure of it now, thanks to Furlong’s update — not to mention Johnny giving Matt a way into the Bat Cave. None of that seems like high security to Matt. He thinks that this, here — a windowless van full of armed un-Americans — is high security.
More questions. The A/C is still on high and the big van idles smoothly.
Matt checks his Timex Skindiver because he’s got doors to knock on with his father and Laurel. It’s only nine forty but he can’t be late.
“I have to go,” he says.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Anthony.”
“I hope you catch him,” says Matt. “You can kick him in the balls for me if you want.”
The men murmur their approval and Bayott smiles his thin smile.
Matt climbs out, not quite believing that he just told Interpol its time was up.
42
Matt and his father pick up Laurel just after ten. The early morning is thick with coastal haze. Bruce wears a white straw Stetson, a snap-button shirt, a yoked corduroy sport coat, and a pair of suede cowboy boots. He sets a tattered leather briefcase at his feet.
Matt and his father have already discussed whether Laurel should continue to be a part of the revised quest team. Matt has argued well in her favor, and prevailed.
But the first thing Bruce says to her after she climbs into the Westfalia and Matt has introduced them is:
“You’re a fine young woman, Laurel, but I don’t think you should be involved in this.”
“Oh, why not, Mr. Anthony?”
Bruce turns around in the passenger seat, holds open his blazer to show her the gun.
“This mission has taken on some complexity,” he says.
“Good God, it sure has. Matt? Is this okay? A gun, and what you’re doing?”
“I think it is, Laurel. Dad’s former law enforcement, as you know. But you, Dad, do not get to give Laurel Kalina orders. You are not her boss. Or my boss, either.”
Bruce drops his jacket flap.
“I am one hundred percent not your boss, Matt. Nor yours, Miss Kalina. I’m simply pointing out that sooner or later, we will find Jasmine, and very likely at least one of three physically powerful kidnappers. Things could turn. I don’t want you in the middle of it, Laurel. An unarmed girl. You can get hurt, or worse. I can’t let that happen. What would your parents say about you doing this?”
“She’s great on the interviews, Dad. People let us in because she’s intelligent and asks good questions. She saves time.”
“Do you know how reckless and naive that sounds, son?”
Matt throws his brain into reverse and sees very clearly that his father is right.
“I resign,” says Laurel. “I don’t want to go. I’m not putting myself around guns for this. I have books to write.”
“Good girl,” says Bruce.
“Matt, Matt, look at me,” Laurel says, tears forming. “I’m so sorry.”
She climbs out and slams the van door and comes around the driver’s side, where Matt has gotten out to say goodbye.
“Please don’t cry.”
“Okay, I won’t cry.”
Laurel kisses him loudly on the mouth and hustles through her front door without a look back.
Of course, the door-to-doors go nothing like the old days. Matt starts the first interview as before, which gets them inside, but refused a full walk-through. Bruce introduces himself as Matt’s father, a detective, and flashes his Tulsa PD shield.
Matt starts his backup pitch about Jasmine being a songwriter and ukulele player, and her tireless volunteer work with Down syndrome children and the Laguna Food Exchange — somewhat exaggerated.
The occupant — a young man in a jeans and work boots and apparently on his way out — is explaining that he really needs to go, when Bruce simply walks past him, across the living room, and into a short hallway.
“He can’t do this,” says the man.
“He’ll be done in just a second,” says Matt. “Don’t get him riled up.”
“Is he really your father?”
“Yes, really.”
“Get him out of here.”
By then Bruce is striding back down the hall, grin on, hat in hand, and his cowboy boots clunking authoritatively on the old hardwood floor.
“Cute little place,” he says.
“Get the fuck out of it.”
Matt hears the anger in his voice.
“Gladly,” says Bruce. “Come along, son.”
Heading for the next house, Bruce says, “Let me do the talking for these next few. Just see how it goes.”
Strangely to Matt, by the time they stop at one o’clock for his paper route, they’ve gotten more permissions to enter and done room-to-room searches than he and Laurel had ever managed in one morning.
Matt sees that Bruce isn’t just tall, handsome, and obviously concerned for his kidnapped daughter, but he’s fast. He swiftly charms and/or intimidates. The men his own age want to be peers, and most of the women seem to admire him, some openly. Homosexual men and women instinctively dislike him, Matt notes, though they’re polite in their refusals.
Bruce just talks and walks past the reluctant citizens anyway, leaving Matt with the small talk.
They’re in and out in no time.
They knock on the door of their old home at Top of the World. It’s a nice little fifties ranch house with a large American flag hung from a pole in the middle of the front yard.
“The pole, Dad.”
“Still standing.”
Matt pictures Kyle and Jazz and him helping their dad pour the cement footing. And later, sneaking their thumbprints into it. He toes back the grass and sees the prints.
“I liked this house,” says his father.
The owners now are a young couple with children in the den, watching cartoons on TV. They’ve both heard of Jazz and have been hoping for good news since reading about her in the papers and seeing the downtown flyers.
“Is the bomb shelter still here?” asks Bruce.
“It’s a wine cellar now!” says the missus. “Have a look.”
Standing amid the racks of down-slanted wine bottles, Matt pictures the old shelves with the alphabetized cans. His favorite canned food was the paper-wrapped tamales that tasted nothing at all like tamales, Dinty Moore stew a close second.
Matt remembers the time Kyle locked him down here for eating his birthday candy. Then ran. Matt was five. It was a hot day and upstairs his parents had the window-mounted air conditioner going full blast and nobody could hear him yelling. The insulation down here was incredibly thick, too, Bruce and his builder friends having done their best to harden the cellar against bombs, Russian MiGs, tanks, and small-arms fire. So the longer Matt yelled the more hoarse he got, and the longer nobody came to let him out, the more claustrophobic and afraid he became. He called his own number and got a busy signal. The rising panic was one of the worst things he’d felt in his five years. Didn’t know what it was. Worse than nightmares. Worse than measles. It was Jasmine who missed him first, finally came down and found him, and Matt in that moment pledged that if Jazz ever got locked up, he’d find her and set her free. Then Matt had quit blubbering and wiped his humiliating tears. He found Kyle upstairs and hit him in the side of the head with his baseball glove as hard as he could. Kyle got Matt in a headlock and waited for him to say uncle, which didn’t take long. Matt had held a grudge for weeks.