He finally packed up his things and leaned in the doorway, beaten and apologetic, like a man about to abandon his wife and family. “They wore gloves.”
“What kind of gloves?”
“Hard to say. We could run a fiber sample through county, but it takes lots of time, and lots of money. Chief wouldn’t approve it, I can tell you right now.”
“But I’m important. I’m the former second-best surfer in this entire metropolis. This is a glamour crime if I’ve ever seen one.”
“It’s not even worth taking a sample. Nothing was stolen. For all we know it could have been Linda Stowe coming here to make your life miserable.”
“Tell the mayor that.”
“Not in my lifetime.”
“If they’d murdered me I’d be better off.”
“Anyone would be, evidence-wise.”
When the cops left, he repaired the major damage, putting the television back on its stand, rearranging the speakers, stuffing some of the foam back into the cushions. He played back his phone messages, finding a dinner confirmation from Tuy Xuan. He thanked Frye again, three times, for saving his life.
The Christmas lights actually pleased him in some unspeakable way, so he left them blinking brightly around the living room. He knew he couldn’t sleep, so he poured a rather colossal vodka over ice. Linda’s ghost threatened from the shadows. He sat for a while on his patio, watching the traffic below, listening to the throttled buzz of electricity in the power lines overhead.
The vodka disappeared at a truly astonishing rate. Evaporation, he concluded: a real problem here at sea level. He made another, which vanished immediately.
Half an hour later he was illegally parked near the Hotel Laguna, wondering at the dire motive that had propelled him here. He jaywalked Coast Highway to the Sail Loft Restaurant and found a seat, ordered a double and let the loose-jointed jazz rattle his bones. He asked the bartender if he knew a blonde who walked a dog with a red scarf around town. “I’ve seen her. Killer legs. Don’t know much about her, Chuck. Cristobel something or other. Why?”
“I owe her an apology.” I’m after her now, he thought. On a mission from God.
It seemed critical to keep moving.
Coast Highway was thick with walkers. He fell into a slipstream of perfume, letting two women pull him along like tugboats leading him to ports north. Their hair swung in the night breeze, riots of gold breaking out under the streetlights. Then everybody seemed to know him: Hi, Chucky; Hey, Chuck, big contest coming up and Bill says you’re gonna surf it; Chucky, my MegaSkate broke in half; Radical sandals, Chuck; I got an eight-ball of the flakiest, Chuck; Chuck... Chuck...
He suddenly longed for a remote island, a big city, for blinding motion or invisible stillness; but the cave house with its ruined rooms was all that called, where Linda’s succubus beckoned from the bed, an apparition warm and tactile as the woman herself. Why does everybody know who you are, he thought, just when you want to be somebody else?
He paused for a moment at the corner of Forest and Coast Highway, where the street people hang out in summertime. A poster showing the outline of a man’s head and a strand of barbed wire was hanging in a storefront window. On top it said:
Her third rally in the county this month, thought Frye. He wondered if Lucia Parsons had bitten off more than she could chew. She keeps promising proof that they’re alive. Good luck to you, he thought. Bring them all back home, each and every one.
The nearest bar was dark, hopeless and comforting. I am blending with my habitat, thought Frye, I am camouflaged. He felt like a perfect jungle lizard, hidden here amidst friendly branches. He ordered a double he was determined to nurse, which knocked another five bucks from his life’s savings. He took a stool and watched the pool balls roll around the felt. Sounds of contact from the table reached him late, like distant pistol shots, and the balls weren’t moving fast enough. His drink disappeared ahead of schedule. The TV on the wall kept falling down, then levitating up again, but no one seemed to notice. The physical world was a tad off tonight.
Try as he did to concentrate on the billiard balls, all he could see was Li being dragged offstage, the curve of flesh under her ao dai as it tore away, her screams amplifying through the Asian Wind. He could see her struggling through the back door exit. He could see her bloody blouse in the trunk of Minh’s car.
And most of all, perhaps, he could imagine the looks of disappointment on Bennett’s and Edison’s faces when they found out that he’d helped Eddie Vo get away.
The really fun part, he thought is when I tell Bennett that his tape is gone.
He paid, veered off the stool, and headed back outside. Snap out of it, he told himself, melancholy is the nurse of frenzy. You tried. If you don’t make mistakes it means you’re not doing anything.
He walked south now, past C’est La Vie and Georgia’s Bistro to the Hotel Laguna, where he stopped to contemplate — with a thrill beyond delirium — the dog sitting dutifully beside a bench. The red scarf looked freshly arranged, John Waynesque.
Cristobel Something or Other. Eureka.
She wasn’t in the bar or on the patio. He marched through the dining room, horrifying the maître d’, nearly taking out a two-top, apologizing profusely and promising a free bottle of wine, seeing her nowhere. He made a quick pass through the women’s restroom, calling her name. Someone screamed. The hotel security chief intercepted him forthwith, threatening police. “You can do that in Manhattan,” Frye protested. “I read Bright Lights, Big City. “
“Then move to Manhattan, creep.”
The man was still glaring at him, arms crossed, as Frye headed for the door. At the desk he secured a pen and a sheet of hotel stationery. Sitting on the bench outside, he wrote: “Apologies for a bad opening line. Things get better from here. Charles Edison Frye requests the honor of an introduction.” He added his phone number, then approached the dog. Dogs had always loved him, which he felt reflected poorly on his character.
“Hey, mutt,” he said. The dog’s tail thumped on the sidewalk as a police siren ascended in the distance. The dog smelled his hand and the folded note. When Frye intertwined the paper with the bandana, the dog licked his arm. The cop car was nearing now, drawing a bead on him, of that much he was certain. The security man regarded him with malice from the doorway. “This animal belongs to my long-lost cousin,” Frye explained. “Until tonight, we believed her dead.”
Someone he didn’t recognize hooted at him from a car, the war cry of the Southern California surfer, loud enough to match the fast-approaching siren. The thought occurred to Frye that he had just disturbed the peace, that he would fail any sobriety test, that he had a morals rap pending, that he had just spent far too long in jail, that he was, in short, poorly positioned to deal with our criminal justice system again.
He bolted around a corner, down a sidestreet, and into an alley. The Cyclone waited at the far end, 390 cc’s of freedom. He sprinted for it, dove in and was about to start the engine when the dog hurled in after him, barking its fool head off. It licked him with zeal, note still locked around its scarf. Frye started up, easing from alley to street in time to meet the cop car speeding his way. He nodded officiously — pursue the criminal element, gentlemen, you have my total support — barely making a yellow light at the signal, then turning south, and gunning the Mercury down Coast Highway toward Linda’s house. It was a short blast to Bluebird Canyon, his heart pounding far too hard, the dog ricocheting from back seat to front then back again, shrieking with delight. He punched the car up the steep incline.