Thirteen
Shephard sped north on Coast Highway toward the Surfside Club, helping himself to the vacant fast lane and holding the Mustang to a mild eighty. An afternoon breeze had eased onto the coast, the first stirrings of a shift from low to high pressure. By evening the wind would hit seven knots, he guessed, frosting the sea with whitecaps and clearing the smog westward for a high-gloss sunset. He pictured himself sitting on the patio of the Hotel Laguna, working on a double Scotch in the company of Jane Algernon
while the sun went down behind Catalina Island. Unlikely daydreams, he thought. But as Jane Algernon’s sleeping figure passed across his mind he again felt that fluttering inside, the covey of quail gathering before flight. He savored the brief sensation, but forced his mind onto other things, telling himself not to surround molehills of emotion with mountains of meaning.
The all-news station featured an interview with a university psychologist, an expert in law enforcement, who posited that “not all police are the cold-blooded killing machines that many people think them to be.” On the contrary, he told the interviewer, some undergo horrible traumas during and after fatal shootings. The nightmares, divorce, and eventual suicide of one such case were noted, and the summation was that people should have more compassion for the cop on the beat.
The report yanked Shephard back to that freakishly drizzly night last August. He had responded to a call from an officer in distress and arrived at the residential street off Pico Boulevard to find a cop being held at bay by a man with a knife. The scene played itself out again: Shephard cutting the lights of the unmarked car, cautiously approaching the two men framed in the headlights of a black and white, moving closer to see that the officer’s hands were held out with the palms up. He could still hear the calm argument, something about whatever was wrong with the cockroaches didn’t require a knife and maybe jail. Then the cop dropping his hands and the man with the knife dropping his for a moment before he swung upward in a quick arc and the officer went for his gun: Shephard could never clearly remember who moved first. He saw the short trajectory of the blade outlined in the headlights. Then the jerking of his right shoulder and the muzzle flash of the Python .357. And the roaring in his ears as the cop went down and the man pitched over backward onto the wet grass, all in a warm drizzle that cast a spectral sheen over the scene. Then that endless moment of indecision while he felt the urine spreading down his pants, and moved closer to see the officer on his knees, bent over, cradling a handful of his own insides, and the young man with only his foot moving and his chest turning dark in the rain. Looking down on him, Shephard saw that he was just a boy.
Shephard lit a cigarette to break the reverie, then pushed to a music station. The song was dreadful but helped to erase the vision of Morris Mumford from his mind. At night it was different. At night, Morris lived inside him and did as he pleased.
The traffic thickened as he approached Corona del Mar. By the time he reached the first traffic light, the cars had coalesced into an unmoving mass of colors, shining chrome, puffs of exhaust. Children bustled up and down the sidewalks, across the crosswalks, through the stationary traffic. They carried the accoutrements of beach kids: boogie boards, swim fins, portable radios, skateboards, blankets. Shephard watched a thin, tan boy with a sunbleached mop of hair bob down the sidewalk in front of him, the Tom Shephard of another lifetime. He was carrying a pair of swim fins and a beach towel over his shoulder. Shephard called out over the door of the convertible: “Hey, how are the waves?”
The boy turned without breaking stride, shot Shephard the thumbs-up signal, then turned back to the bright sidewalk before him. Walk it all the way to Alaska, Shephard thought. His own pale reflection in the rearview mirror, cigarette dangling from under the drooped mustache, was the face of someone who no longer bore relation to the waves at Corona or to the boy on the sidewalk, he thought. Closer to the corpse in the bathtub, or the one in the dirt of Tim Algernon’s driveway. Closer to cigarettes. Closer to death. Closer to the middle, closer to the end. Maybe it was he who should walk to Alaska.
The light changed to green and the cars lurched forward to wait at the next one.
Ten minutes later he had emerged from the Corona del Mar snarl, opened up his speed past Newport Center and the office of South Coast Investigators, and eased down the long slope of highway to the bay bridge. The Balboa Bay Club slipped by to his left.
The first yellow apartments of the Surfside Club appeared to the west, dwarfed by high palm trees that tilted in the breeze. As he swung into the Surfside entrance and stopped at the guard house, Hope Creeley’s words found their way to his mind. Bad luck in the air at the Surfside. The guard was a trim man of about sixty, Shephard guessed. He stepped from the house with a humorless expression, a clipboard in his hand. Shephard smiled and noted that the guard’s holster was on his left hip but he held a pen in his right hand.
“Thinking about a suite,” he said. “Like to have a look around.” The guard perched himself over the car, bent down to have a look inside, then made a brief study of Shephard. “Tom Johnston is the name.”
“Appointment, Mr. Johnston?”
“Lease lines were busy all morning. Drove in from L.A. anyway. The city is driving me crazy.”
“Like that this time of year. Sign in, please.” He passed Shephard the clipboard, who registered with a bogus Beverly Hills address and phone number. The guard — Shephard saw that his name was Arthur Mink — read the information and pointed behind the guard house. “Guest lot around and to your right. Have a nice visit, Mr. Johnston. The leasing office is next to the lounge on A Dock.”
Shephard followed the two-lane road around the guard house and along the flank of the Surfside convention room, where it opened onto a wide expanse of mostly empty parking spaces. The few cars there were clustered around the tennis courts. He put the Mustang between a Rolls-Royce Corniche and a black Seville, and as he swung open the door saw that all of the court marked 7 was taken up by Joe Datilla. The other courts around him were full and several patient players were waiting for their turn, but Datilla was on his alone, driving serves from a bucket of yellow balls at his feet. Shephard admired his precision: stoop for a ball, a breath and an arching of the back as he tossed up the target, a quick rotation of torso and arms as his legs straightened and the racquet rose to full extension, then snapped down. Follow through, return stance, a pleased nod as the ball screamed over the net and smacked into the far quadrant.
Shephard stood at the chain-link fence and witnessed two more serves before Datilla looked over his shoulder. His scowl turned to a smile.
“Tommy Shephard! I’ll be damned.” Racquet in hand, he came to the fence and swung open the gate. Datilla’s handshake was firm and warm, the kind of handshake that says you’re part of the team. “How’s that head doing? You were a little drugged when I saw you last.”
“Just fine. That Scotch made it a little more palatable.”
“The least I could do.” Datilla’s eyes searched Shephard’s face for a brief moment. Shephard noticed that he wasn’t sweating. “What brings you to the Surfside? Everything okay?”
“I’m fine, but my city’s a little on the nervous side. Two murders in one week. Broke all records.”
Datilla sighed. “All I can say is I’m glad I’m not in your business. Any good leads?”
“Let’s talk a minute, Joe.”
Datilla moved his racquet to the other hand and pointed to the bench by the fence. “You got it, Tom. Anything I can do.”
They sat down, Datilla pulling a maroon windbreaker over his suntanned body, Shephard lighting a cigarette. Datilla looked like a man who could afford to be good to himself, Shephard thought, and was.