“You think like a cop.”
“It’s just common sense.”
I understand that I’ve come to a crossroads. I’ve only met with this boy a few times over a few weeks, but we’ve already arrived at a moment of truth. Only truth can support the great weight of the future.
As I said before, I almost believe in him. I think he has what I’m looking for. One man can accomplish much, but two men? Then three, then more? The sky is the limit. It takes a team. There were some forward-thinking deputies at my department back in the eighties. They gave themselves names and they got respect. There were the Renegades and the Vikings and the Saxons and the Reapers. They understood the power of working together. I’ve never met one of them. But I can tell you that they had the right idea.
I lean in close and lower my voice.
“Actually, when we first see the van, it’s headed southbound on Highway Fourteen near Avenue M. We flash it. At this point, Lopes and Vasquez are very much alive and well.”
He looks at me with an expression I’ve never seen on him. Time passes before he speaks. “Oh, man.”
“Oh, man is right, son. Do you want me to go on? You can say no but it has to be now. In life there are no retractions and in this story there will be none either. Once it is told, it is told.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“You’re sure? I’m offering you a way out.”
“I need to know.”
“You cannot unhear.”
“I want to hear.”
I lean in close and I whisper. “Good. Terry goes to the driver’s side and I take the passenger side. The couriers roll down their windows. We talk. They’re eating strawberries out of a basket on the console between them. In the back of the van there are shapes covered by blankets. Flats of strawberries holding them down. We know what is under those blankets. I shoot Vasquez. Terry is supposed to shoot Lopes but Terry can’t pull the trigger. So I do. I give them both the new look. We take the money. I can’t explain to you the thrill of killing two criminals and driving away in a law enforcement vehicle with their money in the trunk. It’s the essence of life as I know it. I call in the tip and we arrange some things for evidence. Then we drive out Pearblossom Highway and wait for Shay Eichrodt to come home from the bars.”
He can’t hide the shock. He also looks disappointed, confused and afraid. It’s a storm of emotions and I can read every one of them. He looks as if he’s witnessed something that has changed his life.
Which, of course, he has.
His face looks older now. He can’t see it but I can. “So,” he says.
“So.”
“Really.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what to think or say.”
“It’s been thought and said before.”
“Except that I…face a similar situation.”
“Of course you do.”
“Where I will have to decide.”
“Yes. And I want to hear all about it. It’s a complex circumstance. There is little simplicity in any life worth living.”
There’s a long silence while we vet each other’s confession.
“Why did you tell me?” he asks.
“I chose you. And you needed to know what’s required. It’s the difference between being a boy and being a man. Do you want to hear the rest of the story? There’s so much more to tell.”
“But why did you choose me?”
“Because of who you are.”
He sits back and sips his beer. “I want to hear more.”
16
The next morning Draper ran north on Laguna’s Main Beach with Juliet beside him. The winter sky was gray, and out by Rockpile he saw a pelican tuck its wings and drop into the green wind-chopped water. A moment later the bird bobbed to the surface and raised its head and a fish tail disappeared down its beak. The waves were small and orderly.
Juliet was older than him by two years, thirty-one, but she had no trouble keeping up with him. He pulled up closer to her and she looked at him flatly, as if he were either a slight annoyance or of minor interest-he couldn’t guess which. All he knew for sure was that he was both the personification of, and a remedy for, Juliet’s self-loathing.
She was brown-skinned and brown-eyed and her body was strong and smooth. Her hair was blond and she wore it with impudent unstyle. Her smile was rare and subtle. She was beautiful. Draper had been with her for a year, and before that with two other women in Laguna very much like her, ever since he came north from Jacumba ten years earlier. To Draper she was a type easily attracted to pretty, forgiving little beach towns-women of great outward beauty and physical health that disguised serious inner damage.
“It’s nice to be home with you,” he said. “It makes my heart glad.”
She ignored him.
They ran up the ramp to Heisler Park and Draper saw that the rosebushes were beginning to bud out. Then up Cliff to Coast Highway north, across at Crescent, down PCH past the galleries and across again to Main Beach and all the way down to Juliet’s place at the Royale.
Draper opened the door and stepped inside. Her condo had a big picture window that looked out at black rock formations and the cold green ocean journeying far to meet the sky. They had furnished it beautifully. There was still a fire going against the morning chill. They made love in the shower and Juliet scratched his thigh hard enough to draw blood. Later she made a show of cleaning the scratch and putting on a dressing, then they dozed on a blanket in front of the fire. Later they went out to lunch and sat by the fire there, too. They sat close and spoke in near whispers, their heads touching lightly. Draper loved the smell of her hair.
“How’s work?” he asked.
“It’s work.”
She was a hostess in one of Laguna’s good restaurants, which kept her busy three nights a week and brought in enough money for clothes and cosmetics. She also worked part-time at the Laguna Club, a day-care center, because she liked children, and volunteered part-time at the animal shelter because she liked dogs.
“Everything went well,” he said.
“You know that means nothing to me. You’ve made it mean nothing to me.”
“It was my only condition.”
“I’m thinking about Aspen.”
“I can tell.”
“I feel as if I’m a shadow here. I have no face. I think I need a change of scenery.”
Aspen, thought Draper. She wouldn’t last a week of winter.
“Get me another lemon drop,” she said.
Draper ordered another drink for each of them and they ate lunch and watched the people on the sidewalk and the eucalyptus trees shimmering outside city hall.
“It didn’t work, Coleman.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“I don’t see why it doesn’t work.”
“It will, Juliet.”
“I’m tired of it not.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“Maybe another doctor. I have a name.”
“Here, I brought this for you,” he said.
Draper pulled the lab report from his jacket pocket. “This says that I’m a fertile little mongrel.”
She took the slip, looked at the checked boxes and the numbers, handed it back. “But I’ve done my part, too, Cole.”
“They said patience. When everything is right, it happens.”
“Three months and nothing.”
“It’s going to happen for us.”
“If it’s me, we can use another woman’s,” she said.
“It isn’t you,” he said. “I want it to be ours.”
Draper was functionally sterile. It was a rare condition that he had been born with. But he knew how much she wanted his child, so he’d created the favorable lab report for her, based on forms he found online, checking the right boxes and filling in hormone levels and sperm count based on Wikipedia information, signing a doctor’s name with convincing haste and sloppiness. He wanted no more children to provide for-Brittany was enough-but he wanted Juliet to be happy.