I asked, “How long did you spy on me?”
“Couple o’ years.” He stayed on the edge of his seat, poised to go. “Until that day-”
“Until the fight?”
“That day, anyway.”
“Beto’s mom died that day,” I said, watching his face. When he nodded, I asked, “Is that what you want to talk about?”
“Something like that.” He stood abruptly. “When you’re free to talk-just you-let me know.”
“You know where to find me,” I said.
“Yeah.” He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt back up over his head and started toward the door. Rafael stepped aside; the man was not a prisoner.
“Do you need a ride anywhere?” I asked, hoping to find out where he was staying at least; Father John did not know.
“Who, me?” He had a sardonic grin. “You offering me a ride in that hearse you drove up in?”
That wasn’t my offer to make. I turned to Jean-Paul.
“Certainly,” Jean-Paul told him. “Just tell Rafael where you wish to go.”
“S’okay,” Larry said. “I have wheels.”
We followed him to the door.
“Larry,” I said as I threw the bolts. “Next time you see me, don’t rabbit.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” He paused in the open door to zip up his sweatshirt. “The thing is, I’ve caught you on TV a couple times, but I haven’t seen you in person since way back. So the other day when I saw you in the yard, you know without all that TV makeup crap on, saw just you, I freaked. I mean, I really lost it.”
“Why?”
“Because you look so damn much like that Miss Martin. And I know she’s dead.”
He stepped outside. With his head hunched low, he checked for enemies, and quickly walked away into the night.
Chapter 8
“Looks to me like a string of substance abuse-related offenses.” Sergeant Richard Longshore, an old friend who works in the Homicide Bureau of the L.A. County Sheriffs, read to me from Larry Nordquist’s rap sheet. I called him first thing Saturday morning, while Jean-Paul was in the shower, and asked him to find out who I was dealing with before I tried to shake the rest of the story out of Larry.
“Petty theft, shoplifting from a liquor store, public nuisance-urinating. He did some weekends in custody for drunk-and-disorderly; looks like he’s a scrapper when he has a bag on. There are some possession and possession-for-sale charges that got him county jail time, but he always bounced out early because of overcrowding. We have DUI, DUI, DUI, driving on a suspended license while under the influence. Solicitation, public intoxication.”
“Solicitation?” I said.
“Earned a buck or two on his knees to buy drugs,” Rich said. “He’s a problem child, Maggie, but it was all petty crap until he went down for aggravated burglary. Because he took a firearm to that party he drew three years at Soledad and his first strike. The firearm enhancement put him in the bigs, so when he was charged with manslaughter-couple of drunks got into a fight and one died-he drew a full five years as guest of the state, and strike two.”
“Maybe going away for a while was good for him,” I said. “Gave him a chance to dry out, got him into a twelve-step program.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” he said. “And take care. If he draws one more strike, he goes down for a long, long time. Guys in his position can get pretty desperate if they have something they need to cover up. And it sounds like maybe your boy does.”
“Did you find anything about Ennis Jones, the man who was once accused of the Bartolini murder?”
“Pretty much what you thought I would,” he said. “He pulled fifteen-to-life on two counts of rape, one of lying-in-wait. Served five before he was sent to a sex aversion program at Atascadero. Died six months later in an altercation with another prisoner, also a convicted sex offender. End of his story.”
Jean-Paul came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and began dressing in work clothes: old jeans and a T-shirt.
“Thanks, Rich,” I said.
“Maggie?” Rich said. “Don’t try talking to the Nordquist guy alone, all right?”
“He said that what he has to say is for my ears only.”
“Too damn bad,” Rich said. “Unless you want your family to be doing some sad singing and slow walking, you don’t go in with the guy alone. Got it?”
“Yessir,” I said, laughing. “Thank you. You’ve been a big help.”
He offered his usual sign-off, “Watch six,” meaning I should guard my rear.
“What did Rich have to say?” Jean-Paul asked as he tied his sneakers.
“Essentially what you said.”
“Smart man, our Sergeant Longshore.” He rose to his feet. “So, what is the plan of attack?”
“Le garage,” I said. “And a trip to the dump.”
His eyes lit up. “In the pickup?”
I handed him the keys, which he pocketed. He loved Mike’s big truck and was happy for any opportunity to drive it. For all of his polish, he was still just a boy drawn to planes, trains and automobiles, the bigger the better.
Opening the garage door was like putting out an OPEN HOUSE sign in the front yard. As Jean-Paul and I tackled fifty years’ worth of accumulated stuff packed into, onto, and around every shelf, cupboard and workbench, the lookie-loos, the curious, and the concerned from one end of the street to the other felt free to drop by to offer advice and comments, or just to chat. My mother would have served coffee.
There were a couple of invited helpers added to the mix. My former San Francisco housemate, Lyle, and his husband, Roy, arrived carrying a giant box of recyclable trash bags. Lyle, who had always been our resident handyman, started on Dad’s workbench, culling useless and duplicate tools to make one good set. We were leaving those tools that the tenants might need, from wrenches to plungers. The rest were up for grabs.
My parents were products of the Great Depression. They were loath to throw away anything that might conceivably have some use left in it, especially if it was connected to an electrical cord or an on/off switch. There was, for example, a drawer full of dead batteries that someone, caught up in magical thinking, must have thought could be brought back to life somehow. The batteries were just part of a vast, sometimes oozing, collection of electronic junk. All of it was put into bags and deposited into the bed of the pickup for delivery to a toxic and electronic-waste station.
Roy, an information technology specialist, went to work on anything computer-related. He removed the hard drives from the dead and outdated computers stacked in a back corner, and consigned the carcasses to the truck. When his corner was cleared, Roy went inside to back up and then wipe Dad’s files from the computer in the den. Roy had built the system shortly before Dad died and thought very highly of its capabilities. We decided that it would stay in the house because visiting faculty might find it useful, if for no other reason than that it was connected to a very good laser printer; visiting faculty might not travel with printers.
Jean-Paul went into the cupboards and began pulling down boxes of Christmas ornaments, camping and sports gear, and various semi-rejects that someone thought were too precious to toss but not precious enough to store inside the house. He received lots of opinions from the peanut gallery on the driveway: you could sell that on eBay, you should have a garage sale, the high school might want the well-used and thoroughly outdated sports equipment, and the library would love twenty years’ worth of National Geographics. Who wouldn’t?
When a Dumpster arrived-a refuse box in Bay Area-speak-for nontoxic discards, the deliverymen received a great deal of advice about placement on the driveway: Leave room for the pickup to come and go, don’t block the garage door, stay out of the flower borders. Like the rest of the actual working crew, the deliverymen paid scant attention to the kibbitzers and placed the Dumpster where it would be convenient for them to pick up again.