As he had spent two of his three Christmases in Los Angeles alone, so far, returning to the familiar ritual for his fourth gave him a degree of comfort. He wasn’t a Christian, and the drop or two of Jewish blood he had inherited from his mother’s side hadn’t galvanized him into any sort of Judaic interests or beliefs, but the season nevertheless had a certain something; it demanded some sort of recognition, if only a brief genuflection in the general direction of the twin gods, Mammon and Glutton. It was also a time that tended to encourage introspection.
First he went to the fridge and took out the smoked salmon and selection of imported cheeses, cold cuts and pâtés he had bought a couple of days ago at the farmers’ market on Fairfax — some Caerphilly, to remind him of his Welsh roots, old Cheddar and cambozola because he liked them.
Then there was that Welsh delicacy, a can of laver bread, made from seaweed and absolutely delicious with a couple of rashers of Canadian bacon. Finally, he would nibble on a couple of the Welsh cakes his Granny Hughes had sent him, as she did every Christmas, without fail. If he were still hungry at supper time, there was a microwavable turkey dinner in the freezer.
When he had set up his tray, he popped the cork on a bottle of Schramsberg Californian “champagne” and poured himself a glass. Then he went over to his CD collection and put on Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”
By the time he had got through the third glass of champagne and most of the smoked salmon, his mind began drifting. He thought first, as he always did at Christmas, of his parents and the family Christmases in Detroit, all the houses in the street decked with colored lights, the presents under the tree, turkey with sage-and-onion stuffing and cranberry sauce, shovelling the piles of snow from the driveway. Well, maybe that wasn’t such a romantic image.
He thought of his grandfather in Amlwch, how at eighty-five he still got around with the help of a knobbly walking-stick and never missed a lunchtime session at the pub, and how his wife, at eighty-two, would bawl him out if he was late back.
He thought about Maria down in San Diego with her family. The thought of her brought back the memory of her perfume, of her warm breast against his arm, and it made him feel horny.
Then he thought of Nyreen and how last year, only a couple of weeks after they had got married, they had gone to the Christmas boat parade down in Marina del Rey.
Bundled up in a green wool sweater against the cool evening, Nyreen had clung onto his arm and jumped up and down like a child, pointing at the procession of boats bobbing by with their illuminated reindeers, angels and fake blue-lit icicles hanging from their bows. Arvo had thought it was tacky, but he was happy to see her so excited and alive. He remembered how passionately they had made love that night. Now she was pregnant in Palo Alto, living with Vern.
By the time Arvo was on his fourth glass of bubbly and his second Welsh cake, Richard Burton was bringing the story to a close. When it was over, Arvo wasn’t sure whether the tears that came to his eyes stemmed from nostalgia for his father’s homeland or from drunken self-pity. He rubbed them away with the backs of his hands and finished the bottle.
In the evening, he watched a double bill of two of his favorite sci-fi videos: Them! and The Creeping Flesh. He stumbled to bed sometime around midnight without having got around to the frozen turkey.
It wasn’t until eight o’clock the next morning that his beeper went off, shocking him out of a chaotic dream about a giant ant with Nyreen’s face trying to explain to him how ants procreated. He woke into a real jackhammer of a headache. When he dialed the unfamiliar number and spoke his name into the receiver, his voice was hoarse with dehydration.
“Arvo, it’s Joe. Joe Westinghouse. Sorry if this seems to be getting to be a habit, but it looks like there’s been another one.”
Still fuzzy from sleep and alcohol, Arvo mumbled, “Another what?”
“Another murder.”
Well what was so odd about that? Arvo thought numbly. Day after Christmas in LA. Any day in LA. Bound to be plenty of other murders. And Joe did work Robbery-Homicide.
“Maybe you’d like to come and have a look?” Joe suggested. “I think this one will interest you.”
“Just a minute,” Arvo croaked, reaching for the pencil and paper he always kept on his bedside table. “Give me the address. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
23
At eight-thirty in the morning the day after Christmas, there was plenty of traffic on the San Diego Freeway as the shoppers headed for the post-Christmas sales at the huge malls out in the Valley. Arvo turned off at Sunset and drove with the top of his convertible open. He needed a little air to blow a few of the cobwebs out of his brain.
No matter how many times he had passed through Bel Air and Beverly Hills, he had never ceased to marvel at the incredibly opulent bad taste that juxtaposed Elizabethan stately homes with Spanish haciendas, fairy-tale castles and French chateaux, all tucked away at the end of long driveways behind walls and elaborate metal gates, all surrounded by immaculately kept lawns. Well, you never did stop marvelling, did you, if you were from Detroit? It made Grosse Point look like the projects.
Still, there was something morbidly fascinating about it all, the way there often is with such overt bad taste. To gild the lily, some of the large houses were strung with gaudy displays of Christmas lights, and there were even a couple of oversized Christmas trees among the topiary, hung with tinsel and baubles. Probably imported from Norway or somewhere.
It was a perfect morning. The whole city had a fresh look and a clean, crisp smell, as it often did after rain. Sometimes, if only for a few hours, it seemed as if a day’s rain could wash all the poison from the air and rinse away years of grease and grime from the streets.
The early sun shone piercingly bright on the white stone of the protecting estate walls, and a few high white clouds floated serenely across the pale blue sky. In the far distance, way beyond the Hollywood Hills, stood the San Gabriel range, greenish-brown slopes scattered with chaparral and sagebrush. High up, near the jagged peaks, rough white striations stood out in relief, where snow had settled in the gullies and fissures.
After three glasses of water and four extra-strength Tylenol, Arvo was feeling a little more human, but he still experienced waves of dizziness and nausea and his heart seemed to be laboring to circulate the sluggish blood through his body. The bright light hurt, even through dark glasses. He didn’t bother turning the radio on; he knew the way a hangover distorted his sense of hearing so much that even the organized harmony of a Mozart quartet would sound like a series of random sounds scraped by chainsaws on iron railings.
He drove up Laurel Canyon to the turn-off road Joe had mentioned, then turned left up the hillside and looked for the hand-painted sign.
Three police cruisers had pulled off the road to block the drive, lights flashing in the bright sun. Arvo parked his car by the roadside and flipped his shield. One of the officers raised the yellow crime-scene tape to let him through and made a note of the time and Arvo’s name on a clipboard.
The short driveway led to the backyard of a small timber A-frame, the front of which, held up by stilts sunk in concrete in the hillside, looked out over the canyon. Trees shaded the whole area and cast eerie, slow-moving shadows over the earth as the breeze stirred their heavy limbs. The air smelled of freshly cut grass, eucalyptus and pine trees. Even though it was early on a December morning, the temperature was in the mid-sixties. Raindrops still clung to the leaves like dew.