It takes Matt just under an hour to retell what happened from the time he and his father arrived at the Feast of the Spirit, and the arrival of the cops and the ambulance. He recalls most of it with a dreamlike detachment, but some parts — hearing Jazz’s voice, seeing her alive and imprisoned, feeling his father’s blood on his hands, killing the disciple under the oak tree — he relives with terrible clarity and strong emotion.
He finishes, aware of the quiet in the room, the traffic out on Forest and Third, the smell of the donut on the napkin in front of him.
“How’s your father healing up?” asks Furlong.
Matt synopsizes: Bruce’s remaining kidney is working well, and the leg wound is draining. The soft tissue of his knee is detached but operable. He can have knee surgery soon.
“And Jasmine?”
Matt takes his time before he speaks. The question is complicated, and the answer changes daily.
“Better. At first, I thought she was holding back some things until she wanted to talk about them. But now I think they’re coming back on their own. The memories, I mean. She has a lot of mental strength.”
“It’s unbelievable to all of us, what Andrujic and the Sungaards put her through,” says Darnell.
“We’ll be seeing her again later this afternoon,” says Furlong. “Not here. At home, where she’ll feel safe and comfortable.”
Matt considers beefy Furlong. “I don’t know if she’ll ever feel safe again. Don’t make her remember things she doesn’t want to.”
He tells them that the Anthony family home is now Third Street again. Same drafty clapboard beach house, he thinks, same GTE building for a view, same grumbling pipes and touchy electricity. His dad gave it to Julie in return for her place in Dodge City, when he leaves the hospital. Matt doubts his father will stay in Laguna for long.
“You don’t have to go out to Dodge,” Matt says with a small smile at Furlong.
He knows how much Furlong hates the place, and his smile’s a dig on Furlong’s continuing inability to ensnare Johnny Grail, or even make decent narcotics busts out in Dodge. Mostly, Furlong just gets lies and misdirection there — firecrackers and tomatoes thrown at him and his men, the feral boys trying to sell them more dried dog turds, and vandalizing Moby Cop and the LBPD radio cars.
But, as adversarial as Furlong and Matt have been, Furlong has still not arrested Matt for his transgressions with LSD and dragon balls on behalf of Johnny Grail. Or fleeing this very cop house and disappearing. Or reckless endangerment for Matt’s perilous double back in the Westfalia against Festival of Arts traffic, and his terrifying of pedestrians in crosswalks. All of which was well witnessed and reported to LBPD.
But that crazy chase — the Westfalia versus Moby Cop — had been necessary, Matt thinks. More than necessary, critical. It had led him to his connections, to Windy Rise, to the Little Wings trapped in the prickly pear, to the Vortex, and to Jazz.
Just as importantly, Furlong has not again pressured Matt into a setup of Grail or anyone else in the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. But Matt believes it’s coming. Just a matter of time.
“Matt,” says McAdam. “Tell me again why you think Zeke Andrujic would allow you to search his home.”
“A bluff. Hoping we’d find an empty house and give up.”
“His whole life is a bluff,” says Darnell.
They ask again about Andrujic’s disciples, who said nothing that night that Matt had heard, except good night to the cooks.
The cops are interested in the idea that Om had trained and rehearsed such violence with them, which will establish conspiracy and give the surviving disciples — the Laguna cops have questioned two others — ample reason to turn state’s evidence against their boss.
All Matt can say is that the silent disciples seemed to anticipate events, moving into, out of, and throughout the big house, using the elevator to mask their movement.
As did Andrujic’s two assistants, Matt says. Whom, Chief Norman Hein told the Register last week, had been cooperating with the police. They’d known about Bonnie and Jasmine — and others, going back five years — all along.
“What exactly did Bayott Benir say to you that night?” Saffalo asks.
“Just that they all were leaving — the Sungaards and Danielle.”
“I’d leave too,” says the DA. “If I knew your sister was being held prisoner two hundred feet away and a hundred feet up.”
Matt nods, picturing the bell tower lit at night. He hears the drone of the generators that drowned out her calls for help. Sees Jazz in her crimson gown — Om’s color of purity, because he was pure and he wanted Jazz to be pure, too — dragging her iron ball and chain across the belfry floor.
Matt has heard a lot from Darnell over the last two weeks, some of it astonishing. Most of it part of Neldra Sungaard’s plea deaclass="underline" Andrujic was a small-time criminal drifter and con artist, and later a self-taught spiritualist who had modest success with the Garden of Earthly Delights, a meditation center / health food store / social space in the hills north of L.A. He was smart and ugly, a glutton and a sexual opportunist, but he had charm. Neldra told them that Andrujic had a “physical and spiritual craving” for the beautiful, pilgriming teenaged girls and boys who showed up weekly at his Garden of Earthly Delights. And he assumed that thousands of men throughout the world shared that craving. He sensed the money to be made if he could cultivate a “pure product” and offer it to refined and wealthy customers in a way that everyone would profit — even the pure young people who would be his merchandise. According to Neldra, when she and Andrujic met at a party in the Hollywood Hills one hot September night, they recognized one another as kindred spirits. A partnership began. Neldra was impressed by Andrujic’s grasp of how to market popular culture. American youth and beauty for anyone in the world who could afford it, said Darnell. Barbie and Ken dolls for old men, Matt thinks. He remembers Gauguin’s natives in the Pageant tableau, Laurel hopeful but Rose suspicious of corrupt invaders. Her eyes wary because she knows...
“Still with us, Matt?” asks Furlong.
“Yes, sir.”
“Not daydreaming of Dr. Hamilton’s Youth Leadership Center, are you?”
Matt shakes his head, never surprised by Furlong’s eagerness to induce fear. Two weeks ago he had panicked Matt into running away. But now, Matt thinks, things are different. Now if Furlong threatens him, he’ll just put out his wrists for the cuffs. Get a public defender, tell the truth, and hold on tight.
“What did you sense the relationship was, between the Sungaards and Danielle Huber?” asks Darnell.
“Hard to tell. That day in Mrs. Sungaard’s place, they just seemed like friends sharing a house.”
“And later, arriving at the Vortex that afternoon with Bayott and the Sungaards?” she asks.
Matt pictures Danielle Huber following the Sungaards toward the front porch of Mahajad’s home, smiling and joking with Bayott.
“She seemed happy,” says Matt. “Like she was looking forward to something. Her clothes were pretty and her hair was good and she had makeup on. You know how people behave when they’re eager to please. Like that.”
“And again, what color was her dress?”
“Still orange,” says Matt.
“And still important,” says McAdam. “The colors mean rank to Andrujic’s followers. First, street clothes, then white, yellow, orange, and crimson. Lowest to highest. Danielle Huber was on the same path of destruction as your sister and Bonnie Stratmeyer. Oh, not a path to destruction — to purity.”
This rings true to Matt in a way that makes his heart ache. Bonnie from high school, kind-faced and happy. The first dead person he’d ever seen.