“Ten-zing,” she sang, in her distinctive Arizona drawl. “I’ve missed you!”
“Likewise,” I said, bowing and kissing her hand. Jean is in her 60s, tall and thin, with a quirky, if careworn, beauty and a bobbed haircut straight out of the roaring ’20s. She’s been waiting on cops at Langer’s for over two decades, with the brashness and bunions to prove it.
“I hear you quit the force,” she said. “Good for you. I wish I could quit.”
“What’s stopping you?” I said.
“I still owe the Scientologists a hundred thousand dollars,” she said.
We shared a laugh. Jean had, in fact, been a devoted member of the Church of Scientology for 16 years, signing up with them in her early 20s. She was one of the few people who quit and lived to tell the tale: “They told me I was totally clear. I told them, ‘I’m not totally clear, I’m totally broke, thanks to you guys, so fuck you very much, and good-bye.’”
Jean gave me a stern glare over her coffeepot. “You look tired, Ten-zing. Are you all right?”
I admitted I was working pretty hard, for an un-employed person.
“And how’s the bad news doing?”
“Ruling the household, as always.”
Jean has called Tank “the bad news” ever since the time she harangued me about my lack of a love life. I told her she was wrong, I had all the intimacy a man could want.
“The good news is, I’ve been in a long-term, committed relationship for four years,” I’d said.
“What’s the bad news?”
“It’s with a cat.”
Bill slid into the booth across from me, and Jean jotted down our orders: pastrami and Swiss for him, a grilled cheese sandwich and a side of slaw for me.
I took in Bill’s coat and tie, and shifted a little in my seat. I was still in the rumpled jeans and T-shirt I’d pulled on in the dark this morning.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” Bill answered. He reached under his coat and pulled out a manila envelope.
“You wanted to know the autopsy results from the woman who got killed over your way.”
“Barbara Maxey.”
“Right, Maxey. Well.” He pushed the envelope across the wood.
I slid out the report and found myself staring down at the photograph of Barbara’s ashen cadaver. Her warm smile flashed in front of me, then was gone. I skimmed over the details: “petechial hemorrhaging” and “laryngeal abrasions,” cold, clinical terms, belying the violence of her death.
Then my breath caught.
“Did you see this?” I asked, pointing to the bottom of the last page.
“I saw it,” he said, his voice grim.
“Her voice box was crushed after she was strangled to death?”
“Yep. Looks like somebody was making a point.”
Don’t talk, I thought.
Jean delivered our plates. Bill leaned over and inhaled the aroma. “Mmm-mmm. I’m telling you, Ten, you have no idea what you’re missing.”
Jean, still hovering, snorted. “Shame on you, Bill. He can’t eat cows on account of they’re sacred to him. Right, Ten-zing?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that would be the Hindus. As Jean zoomed off to another table, I slipped the autopsy report back in the envelope and set it aside.
Don’t talk. But about what? What had Barbara known that demanded such a brutal message?
CHAPTER 16
Bill, being a working man, had to eat and run. I sat in the parking lot for a few moments, digesting, and testing my emotional insides. They were tender, sensitive to my mental prodding, like a canker sore. Reading the details of Barbara’s autopsy had walloped me, delivered a brutal gut-blow matching the fist-smash to her own jugular. What was I doing to help her? I had no money coming in, and was no closer to figuring this stuff out than I was to earning a salary.
I looked at my clenched fists, resting on the steering wheel. Loosened them, finger by finger. Self-recrimination was going to get me absolutely nowhere. There were too many questions swirling like loose sediment in my psyche. I had to find a quiet zone to sit, let the silt settle. See what I actually knew.
I drove north on Alameda, turned right on Third, and again on San Pedro. I circled the block to look for street parking, and then thought better of it. A bright yellow Mustang might prove irresistible to gangbangers and car thieves. I grudgingly parked underground at Five Star and walked the two blocks to the Japanese American Cultural amp; Community Center. I tried to leave my resentment over public parking outside the gates of my secret downtown refuge, an authentic Japanese stroll garden.
I had stumbled onto the garden early on in my police training. I’d gone into Little Tokyo for takeout and was looking for a quiet place to eat. Something drew me to the Cultural Center, and I’d soon spotted a small side gate. I pushed it open, and was rewarded with my first glimpse of the Seiryu-en, the Garden of the Clear Stream. It turned out food wasn’t allowed, but ever since, I’d visited this garden many times to partake of my other necessary sustenance, the spiritual kind.
I looked around. I was alone. Good. I stood still, letting the melodious sound of water cascading over rock soothe me. The azalea bushes were glossy green, with tight buds hinting at the spring bloom ahead. The delicate foliage of the heavenly bamboo still showed traces of the bright crimson it wore through the winter months, but I could picture the clusters of creamy white blossoms to come. The same with the Japanese wisteria-its green leaves held their secret close, but within a few months the vines would be draped with flowering lilac clusters, smelling of grape and possibility.
My eyes traced the tumbling waterfall as it forked into two streams near its head, splitting around a small island, then slowing and reuniting in a shallow, quiet pond.
I stepped onto the walking path, and let my attention rest on the sensation of my upright body, my arms hanging by my sides, my hands lightly clasping each other. I let my eyes rest on the ground, a few feet ahead of me. Lift, move, press. Lift, move, press. I paused, breathing in and out, feeling my lungs bellow and compress. Lift, move, press. Feet touching the ground, the space between each step, the feeling of stopping and starting. The mental silt began to settle, the inner chatter to fade away. Lift, move, press.
I paced the circular path, feeling the terrain change beneath me: hard granite … beaten earth … knobby, uneven stepping-stones. I traversed the three arched, wooden bridges, hanging like lanterns over the gurgling water. Lift, move, press.
Pieces of my dream tiptoed back to me, enticed by the clear, empty vessel that was now my consciousness. I let the images flow: my father standing guard … the X-shaped building … the pelicans … the watchtower. A geometric tattoo, straddling a man’s thick neck. Guards. Pelicans. Prison. Paradise.
Got it.
As I left, I stopped at a small fountain, cupping my hands under the cool stream of water flowing from a bamboo spout into a stone basin. My teachers taught me well. Thank you.
Bill met me in the lobby of the Police Headquarters.
“Two Tenzing sightings in one day,” he said. “I like it.”
We took the elevator to his fourth-floor office, where he closed the door. I told him about the insurance policies. The suspicions I had about Buster’s death and Freda’s illness. My visit to the Children of Paradise. Barsotti’s pig farm. John D’s almond grove. Then I ran the dream images by him, and what I thought they meant.
Bill nodded at once, like he got where I was going. He pulled up a page on the computer and tipped the screen my way. I found myself staring at an overhead view of the Pelican Bay State Prison. My eyes zeroed in on an X-shaped cluster of white concrete buildings set apart from the main facility.