“What do you mean?” he asked looking a little hurt.
“I’m sorry. I assumed you weren’t the dad.”
“He’s mine,” he stated.
“Nelson,” I said, leaning back in, “I have no doubt that you can and will be a great father, but you’re not the father.”
“It doesn’t matter who it is,” he said after a moment. It sounded like even he didn’t know the identity of the father.
“No, I get it. But obviously the courts won’t see it our way.”
That one had a greater impact than I thought it would. I had successfully maneuvered the kid to the point of total despair. It was time to bring him back. What was supposed to feel like a moment of triumph instead made me feel ashamed.
I convinced him to meet Jeanette and the three of us would contact the authorities. I would hire them a lawyer and be with them every step of the way. Nelson nodded his head in resigned acceptance to my plan.
There was a knock on the front door. We looked to each other for an explanation.
“Jeanette?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” but there was hope in his voice.
“Could be the neighbor next door,” I said.
We were both wrong.
“Hello,” smiled Detective Ricohr but there was nothing cheerful about it. “Can I come in?” he asked as he crossed into the living room.
Nelson stood by the couch as the Detective and the local police streamed into the increasingly cramped space. Through all the chaos Nelson never took his eyes off me.
“Sit down, son,” Detective Ricohr instructed. “It wasn’t Mr. Restic’s fault. Not intentionally, anyway.” He turned to me. “I took a gamble and put someone on you. I had a feeling you knew more than you let on.”
We all walked out together into the late afternoon sun. It sat low on the horizon and felt hotter than it actually was. The police activity attracted many onlookers from the surrounding homes, including the neighbor on the left. I avoided his gaze but I knew it was directed at me. I was getting tired of disappointing people.
***
Detective Ricohr rode with me on the long drive back to downtown. We were like a couple of travelers forced into intimacy on an oversold bus. There were no TVs to distract us and nowhere at all to escape.
We talked about anything and everything — the sectarian violence in the Middle East which neither of us really understood, the inanity of the Los Angeles highway system where major feeds crossed each other and somehow didn’t have connectors, the wild idea to have the concrete-encased LA river return to its natural state. Detective Ricohr was more of a revealer than me, and I heard all about his various ailments, his divorce from twelve years ago, and the three kids from the marriage. Two things we did not talk about were the weather and the murder case.
I dropped him off on First Street in front of police central headquarters.
“What’s going to happen to Nelson?” I asked.
“We’ll just talk to him for a few hours and see what we can get and then send him home.”
“He probably won’t say much.”
“That’s what everyone thinks. Until they get in there.”
“No, I just don’t think he knows much about the girl’s murder.”
“You said before that you thought the murder and the old man’s missing granddaughter were connected.”
“I think the Valenti girl has the information, not this kid.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t be hanging with you.”
“What’s he paying you, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Nothing. He fired me.”
Detective Ricohr mulled that over. He let two late commuter buses pass by with their roaring engines and plumes of exhaust.
“If you find the girl, do you find my killer?”
“When I find the girl and talk to her, your killer should become very clear.”
“You hope.”
“You hope,” I corrected.
“We both hope,” he finished and headed into the building.
“Detective,” I called him back. “I’m sorry for not telling you everything ahead of time. And you may not believe it, but I was going to call you after I had spoken to the kid.”
“Save the apology for later,” he said. “I suspect this won’t be the last time you disappoint me.”
Tired as I was, I headed in the opposite direction of my house and drove out towards the Westside. I stopped at a diner just off the 10 freeway and sat in one of the booths by the window. I picked at a tuna melt and fries but mostly I watched the heavy stream of traffic funneling on and off the freeway. There was something hypnotic about it. After the third time I was asked for a water refill, I got the hint and decided to give them their booth back.
Time never moves slower than when you are trying to kill it. I drove aimlessly around the side streets but that was only good for a half hour. I did a couple of tricks of randomly picking destinations and then driving there and back a few times like a runner doing track work. Finally I gave up and drove over to Nelson’s house and parked in one of the few open spots on the street.
I don’t know how long it took because I dozed off a few times but eventually a car appeared and parked in the narrow driveway. Nelson squeezed out of the passenger door and headed for the house with his tatted-up brother at his side. If I factored in all of the wasted time in and around any visit to a police station, the fact that Nelson was home before midnight was a bit of a miracle. Detective Ricohr had kept to his word.
I wasn’t finished with Nelson. He was my one link to Jeanette. I got out of the car, though not entirely sure what I was going to do to get past his brother and over-protective abuelita, never mind what I would say to him to get him to talk to me again. In that moment of hesitancy, I watched Nelson and his brother walk towards the front door and I marveled at the unspoken support emanating from the backs of one person walking next to another in silence. There was no steadying hand, no arm around the shoulder. He didn’t even hold the door for his brother. But Nelson was back with his family and that was a good thing.
I got back in my car, fired up the engine, and headed out for the long ride back to Eagle Rock. The black sedan waited for me in front of my house.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF DYING
I parked in the garage and came out the side door. Hector waited for me on the walkway. We silently made our way inside, and he waited patiently in the center of the living room while I turned on some lights and opened the windows to let in the cooling night air.
“They got another email,” he told me after I stopped buzzing around the room. I made a move to sit down, but Hector made no move at all, so I remained standing. “They want more money.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Three million.”
This time I sat down and thought it over. That was quite a jump from forty thousand dollars. “I assume the email came from Jeanette?” He nodded. “Did you see the actual email?”
“It was sent to Mr. Valenti. I heard him talking to his daughter and Jeanette’s dad.”
“What did you mean by ‘they’ wanting more money?” Hector shrugged his shoulders but I could tell he had some ideas. “The police found the Portillo boy,” I said and explained exactly how they found him, but the mention of the boy didn’t register with Hector. “Who do you think it is?”
Hector deferred to his boss.
“Mr. Valenti said if it was either of them he’d crush them.”
“Either of whom? Meredith and Jeff?”
“He told them when they came to the house.”
It was not a surprise that Valenti had suspicions about his daughter and her ex-husband. He was innately suspicious of everyone when it came to money. I wondered if he thought they were in on it together. Individually, they both had the motive and if I thought about it enough, I could imagine each attempting something like this, or trying it together.