As he pulled into the driveway, he saw lights on. His uncle, John O’Brien, must still be awake. He wondered if John was having a rough night.
John was staying with Alex for a few weeks while he recovered from knee surgery-a classic cop ailment, brought on by years of stepping in and out of patrol cars. He was able to move around the house now but was forbidden to drive. Alex was glad he had talked John into recuperating at his place-it made him feel as if he had paid back a small portion of a large debt. Alex believed he owed more to John O’Brien than to any man on earth.
John was his mother’s younger brother. Alex was eight years old and Miles, his older brother, was ten when they first met John. John had joined the army in 1966, just after college, and because he wasn’t fond of his wealthy brother-in-law, he didn’t see much of his sister after her marriage. He served most of his time in the military with Special Forces, mostly on an A team working with the Montagnard in the central highlands of Vietnam. He returned to the States in 1972 with the rank of captain, a Purple Heart, and a Bronze Star. (Alex learned of the medals a year later, in an unauthorized search of a foot-locker-that had earned him the only whipping he had ever received from his uncle.) John stopped by for what was supposed to be a brief visit to his sister in California, and for reasons Alex was unaware of then, decided to leave the military and stay in the Los Angeles area.
Although he had received more lucrative offers, when John left the military he joined the sheriff’s department. Over the next three decades, he worked mostly in LASD field operations, and as part of the department’s specialized teams for hostage rescue and other emergency operations. Except for periods of time as a tactical operations and weapons trainer, he passed up any promotion that would have taken him away from working on the streets, or teaching those who did.
As an adult, Alex came to realize that John’s decision to live near his sister’s family had probably been the result of the soldier’s taking the measure of his brother-in-law. He was also undoubtedly able to see that his sister was unhappy and that her troubles weren’t just a matter of typical marital discord.
Alex’s father was a handsome, athletic man, capable of great charm, who had never held a job or felt the need to get one. If asked what he did for a living, he would have said he was an investor. Managing his substantial inheritance did take up some of his time. Spending it took up more.
While Alex’s grandmother was alive, she kept her volatile son somewhat in check. Despite occasional rebellion (most notably, eloping with Alex’s mother), he wanted to please the old woman, and lived for those rare moments when he did. When she died, he gradually began to enjoy the lack of restraint.
He wanted the best in life, not because he enjoyed the luxuries for which he paid so dearly, but because he was competitive. If his friends owned an Italian villa, he had to have a larger one, in a better location. If they threw a lavish party on a yacht, he had to host a more extravagant one on a bigger yacht. The Brandon millions, wealth that had been in the family for five generations, dwindled. All so that an insecure man would be admired by friends who were, if not wishing him ill, hoping to best him.
By the time John came to California, Alex had already learned when to steer clear of his increasingly moody father. At times exuberant and playful, his father could just as easily fall into despair. The affable man who saw him off to school in the morning might become the angry one by the time he returned home.
As one risky venture after another failed to bring the change of luck his father believed was bound to come his way, his parents began to argue. The Brandons were forced to sell their Malibu home when Alex was twelve. Alex remembered his mother protesting-uselessly-that a twenty-room house in Bel Air was more than was needed.
Visits from John were the only relief in the growing tension at home. John spent time with both nephews, but Alex was more eager to join him than Miles. Miles didn’t care for the discomforts of camping, fishing, or hiking, while Alex would have been happy to live in the woods. When John took his nephews to basketball, football, hockey, and baseball games, Miles didn’t want to sit in less than the best season ticket holder’s box seats-possible, because their father’s unused tickets were often available to them-but Alex was equally pleased to sit next to John on a hard bleacher in the nosebleed section.
Sometimes, they met other sheriff’s deputies, and Alex liked that, too-their teasing, rough humor, the camaraderie that seemed so much more genuine than his parents’ friendships. Once, at home, Miles referred to the officers as boorish. John hadn’t been there to hear it, but Alex noticed that shortly after that, Miles never happened to be invited on the days they went to those gatherings. Miles started referring to John’s home in Long Beach as “Uncle John’s little place” and seldom ended up going with them there, either.
Alex didn’t care who was with them or where they went. What mattered was a chance to be with John, who, in contrast to his father, was calm and steady. Alex felt safe with him.
Early one evening, Alex returned to the house in Bel Air after a day of hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains with John. Only a few lights were on, and as always, John insisted on making sure an adult was home before leaving him. Alex explained that his mother and Miles were at the symphony, that his father was probably upstairs. “Besides, I’m fourteen,” Alex said. “I’m not some little kid. I can be home by myself.”
“I’ll be waiting right here while you get your dad,” John replied.
“It’s a big house. Twenty rooms.” He blushed the moment he said it.
“Much bigger than my little place?” John said with a smile. “Better get started, then.”
Embarrassed to be caught acting snobby like Miles, and chafing at John’s refusal to acknowledge his advanced age, Alex stomped upstairs, impatiently calling for his father, throwing open doors and snapping on the lights of those darkened rooms-while John looked on serenely from the foyer below.
Later, John said that Alex had fallen utterly silent, that it was the way Alex reeled back from the study doorway, his stumbling gait and his wide-eyed, white-faced look of shock that made John run upstairs toward him. Alex found it hard to believe; in his mind, he could clearly hear the piercing sound of his own scream, just as he could clearly recall the sight of his father’s body, the shotgun, the spatter on the wall-the damage to the face and skull that had brought one man mercy and left none for his son.
The last of his father’s debts were paid with the sale of their home and its furnishings.
John took them in. From Bel Air, they moved to his small three-bedroom home in Long Beach. For the first time in their lives, Miles and Alex shared a room. For the first time in their lives, they attended public schools. Miles, who was then sixteen, resented these changes more than Alex did, but both did well in school. Their mother accepted it all with calm grace, taking a job as a receptionist, focusing her life on the needs of her sons. She died when Alex was twenty, but she had, he thought, been happier during those few years in Long Beach than at any earlier time he could remember.
Miles won a scholarship to USC, but John covered the many expenses the scholarship did not. While Alex paid his own tuition to Cal State Long Beach, John also helped him in innumerable ways. Although he had never received any pressure from John to work in law enforcement, it was his admiration for his uncle that led Alex to join the sheriff’s department.