As traffic picked up, I closed my window and let its tint darken Vegas once more. I wondered then if peace was a thing that one achieved or that one could only be given.
Last time I took this road, I felt like I’d just escaped a burning house that I’d ignited in the night, that had singed my backside and sent me fleeing my own shadow. I didn’t understand it then, but I admitted it to myself now: I had wanted all along to kill Sonny. There was no logic or morality behind it. Just an overwhelming desire to do something to him, at least hurt him badly, and maybe then things would feel right again. Except they never did, because they never do, not for people like me. I was back on the highway, steering blind, hoping for a clear path beyond the horizon.
This had become my life since Suzy left: a constant fumbling toward peace that lies only and always in the distance.
4
WE TOOK THE HIGHWAY south of the Strip until the city turned into a succession of clay tile roofs and stuccoed strip malls lined with palm trees. It was typical suburbia, distinguished by a pervading newness as bright as the sunlight. You could almost smell the sawdust and drying paint.
We approached a large park. Softball fields and basketball courts. Picnic tables. More trees and shade than I’d seen anywhere in the city so far. By the entrance, crowning the treetops, a giant digital screen flashed the words SUNSET PARK! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
After some distance inside the park, we appeared to reach its end at a gravel lot that yawned into a vast desert of brush and dirt mounds. We parked. The brothers got me out. We were still deep in the suburbs, but this felt like the edge of the city, the point where it surrendered itself entirely to sand and dust and silent sunlight and people vanish by simply walking into the distance. A few lonely cars peppered the lot. My Chrysler was not among them. For the first time since leaving Oakland, I regretted ever getting out of that car.
But I only had to turn around to see life again: the tops of pine trees ahead and then, as we mounted a short grassy hill, the enormous pond that glistened beyond them.
It was like stumbling upon a man-made oasis, burnished gold in sunlight. The pond was around fifteen acres, its grassy banks dropping over a short brick wall that encircled the waters like the coping of a swimming pool. A few people sat at picnic tables bundled in their coats beneath shady pines, watching the ducks, the pigeons flapping about like seagulls, the toy boats buzz-sawing across the glimmering water.
As my two escorts scanned the area, I spotted the small island at the center of the pond, a mirage within a mirage, adorned with a giant Easter Island head that loomed out of a grove of palm trees.
The older brother pointed at someone in the distance. As they flanked me, we walked toward a chestnut tree with a large branch overhanging the water. Beneath the tree, wrapped in a dark coat, sat a hooded figure in one of two lawn chairs. He held a fishing rod in his lap, its line in the water. I wondered if Sonny was a man who ate the fish he caught or threw them back.
As we came closer, the figure turned his head, and I realized it wasn’t Sonny at all. Even under the hood, Junior’s angular, elegant face was easily recognizable. His expression did not change when he saw me. He just sucked at his cigarette and returned his attention to the pond. His father was nowhere in sight, and I couldn’t decide if that relieved or disappointed me.
With my two escorts hanging back, I approached the empty lawn chair beside him, stepping into the shadow of the chestnut tree.
“Please have a seat,” Junior said without turning to me. He was wearing a long black duffel coat and leather gloves, holding the fishing rod indifferently in one hand and smoking with the other. As stoic as a mannequin.
He called out something in Vietnamese to the brothers. The older one approached him and said, “Are you sure?” Junior gave him a look. Without another word, the two brothers made their way down the sidewalk that skirted the pond.
Junior peered at me now with raised eyebrows. I could see my own awkwardness in his calm, dignified demeanor. It reminded me of my first and only time going to confession, at Suzy’s request, and not knowing what was too sinful to divulge to the priest and what was not sinful enough.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said.
“Is it?”
“It is. So long as you cooperate this time.”
“I don’t know anything about Suzy.”
“I know.”
“Does your father know it?”
“We both know it now. We had to be sure first.”
“About what? That I wasn’t hiding her? That I hadn’t stolen her back?”
“Given your last visit, we thought anything was possible.”
A moment passed before I realized I was silent out of shame. My recklessness months ago had cost me the right to be above suspicion in anyone’s eyes, least of all theirs.
“So why am I here now? Is it penance you want?”
Junior unhooded himself. His pale skin was flawless, his hair slicked back, not a strand out of place. Such symmetry seemed to sharpen his admonishing air.
He said, “I am here today in my father’s place because I insisted on it. Because I know he is a man who remembers everything and forgives nothing. You should be glad to see me, Mr. Robert. And you should be grateful — to my father and to me — that up until now you have been shown some mercy. Do you understand?”
He noticed my left hand, which I’d been absently clenching and unclenching.
“Of course I do,” I said, more meekly than I wanted to. If I had been spared, I doubted that kindness was behind it. Still, Junior’s tone confused me. It struck me that his most inscrutable habit was his insistence on his own sincerity. Like last time, I found it difficult to trust, but even more difficult to dismiss.
I searched along the banks, the picnic tables, the random vague figures who might resemble his father, watching us from a distance. About fifty yards away, the brothers sat smoking on a bench with their sunglasses and their obviousness trained on us.
“Listen,” I said to Junior. “I respect everything you’re saying. Believe me, this situation between me and your father, between me and you — none of that’s lost on me. But you guys’ve had a gun to my head for a day now. Someone needs to either shoot me or explain what the hell’s going on.”
Junior reached down and stubbed out his cigarette in the dirt. He took off his gloves, dropped them in his lap like he was ready at last to speak truthfully.
“Miss Hong disappeared four days ago. The last time my father saw her was Saturday night when she was sleeping in bed. Sunday morning, she was gone. As you must know, she never misses Sunday Mass for anything. She took her car and her purse and left everything else. Her clothes, jewelry, books, everything. She and my father have had their problems, and she’s had her reasons for leaving in the past. But nothing explains her leaving like this.”
He looked at me like I had contradicted him. “Understand something, Mr. Robert — my father has made mistakes, some much worse than others. But he loves Miss Hong more than anyone in the world. He wants her back. And he wants you to help him.”
I must have looked sufficiently perplexed because he raised a quelling hand and added, “We have reason to believe she’s still in town, and I’ll explain that shortly — but that is why you’re here.”