51.
Sanchez and I were across the street from my pad, upstairs at the Huntington Beach Brew Pub.
"Why am I always coming out to O.C. to meet you?" he asked.
"Because I'm worth it," I said. "What's Danielle doing tonight?"
"She's taking a class. Going back to school to get a degree in finance. She's hit a ceiling at work, needs the degree."
"It's about time you let her have a life you chauvinistic Latino pig."
"Hey, I'm only half Latino."
We were both drinking the blond house draft, a light, sweet beer.
Sanchez said, "Why is it the blond beer is the lighter beer, and the darker beer gets you drunk faster? Thought blonds have more fun."
"How long you been thinking that one up?"
"Just came to me. I am, after all, a UCLA-educated Latino."
Our food came. And lots of it. I had ordered from the appetizer menu, running my forefinger straight down the list and rattling off anything that sounded good. And it all sounded good. Now, plates of nachos, chicken wings, calamari, southwestern eggrolls and even an artichoke were arriving steadily at our table.
"Someone in the kitchen must like you," said Sanchez, "because they gave you a green flower."
"It's called an artichoke, you oaf."
"Well, your arteries are going to be choking after you eat all that shit."
Despite myself, I laughed.
"What can I say?" Sanchez said. "I'm on a roll. Can I have any of that shit?"
"Get your own food."
"Can't; you cleaned out the kitchen."
We drank from our beer. The Lakers were playing the Jazz. Shaq was unloading on them.
"So I've got news on Pencil Dick."
"Who's Pencil Dick?"
"Your teacher friend, Bryan Dawson. Anyone poking high school students is called a pencil dick."
"I see; what's the news?"
Sanchez leaned forward on his elbows. "Pencil Dick was involved in another murder up north. In a city called Half Moon Bay."
"So tell me."
"A student of his, a band student, disappeared. They found her floating in the San Francisco bay. Pencil Dick was a suspect, but they couldn't pin anything on him. He quit his job and came down here."
"Well, then, what do you think we should do?" I asked.
"We tail him. With Amanda gone, he might be looking for new blood."
52.
I found the allegedly green Taurus parked in front of a small woodframe house in Santa Ana. It was 9:00 p.m., and the Taurus still looked blue to me.
Santa Ana is mostly Hispanic and its residents are perhaps the poorest in Orange County. In fact, downtown Santa Ana looks as if it had been lifted whole from Mexico City.
Johnny Bright, as a Caucasian, would stick out in Santa Ana like a sore white thumb.
But one question remained: was Johnny Bright the same guy who took a potshot at my ear? The vehicle could have belonged to a friend. In that case I would follow the friend. Either way, with a paid killer on my ass, I preferred to be proactive in my involvement with him.
I waited in my car around a corner, with a clear view of Bright's front porch. My own vehicle had nicely tinted windows, and from behind them I watched the house through lightweight high-powered binoculars. I didn't have many tools of the trade, but this was one of them.
I was listening to Will Durant's Story of Philosophy on tape. The 5 Freeway arched above the housing tract. Freeway noises, especially the rumble of a Harley, cut through the drone of the tape. I was on my third tape, marching on through Voltaire and the French Enlightenment, when four gang members stopped by the Mustang and looked it over, not realizing I was inside. I rolled down my window and reached under my seat and pulled out a fake police badge.
Another one of my tools....
"Can I help you gentlemen?" I said, flashing the badge.
The first one, a skinny kid with a black bandana tied around his head, shot his hands up as if I had pointed a gun at him. When he spoke he had a long, drawling Hispanic accent, punctuated by jerky hand movements.
"Don't shoot me, officer, I didn't mean to look at your killer set of wheels."
"You can look but don't touch."
"Waddya doin' here?" asked the kid, their obvious leader.
"Watching you boys."
"Are you gay, too?"
His buddies slapped each other high fives.
Behind them there was movement in Bright's house, but I couldn't see because the gang members were in my way. I heard a screen door swing open and slap shut.
"Beat it," I said.
The three of them waited for their leader. The leader squinted at me and seemed to recognize me. I get this kind of partial recognition a lot. Probably because at one point in their lives they had seen me on their TV screens, or in their newspapers, or sports magazines. But this kid was young, perhaps too young to know of me. But you never knew.
He jerked his head. "Let's roll," he told the others.
They sauntered off. One called me a pig. They would be potential witnesses; that is, if the police tried very hard to investigate the murder.
Murder?
Yeah, someone's going to die tonight.
Across the street, Fuck Nut, with his slicked-back graying hair visible from even here, opened the door to his Taurus and got in.
53.
We drove through Santa Ana. I tailed him using tricks gleaned from my father. Once, at a red light, I even turned into a liquor store parking lot. When the light turned green again, I pulled out of the parking lot and continued tailing him.
At least I was amusing myself.
He pulled into a Taco Bell, and I waited across the street. He went through the drive-thru, and when he exited I followed him back to his house.
Across the street, I waited for him to finish his tacos, since it was his last meal. As I waited, I listened to the beating of my heart, filling the silence now that the book on tape had been turned off. The thudding filled my ears, and I focused on that rather than what was about to come. What had to come. I didn't think of myself as a killer, but sometimes you had to do what you had to do. I needed this guy off my ass and away from Cindy.
When twenty minutes had passed, I stepped out of my car, crossed the street and walked up his front porch. The porch was made of cement, and my footfalls made no sound.
I stood before the door, aimed for the area under the doorknob, lifted my foot and smashed it open. Wood splintered. The door swung open on one hinge, and I kicked it the rest of the way open.
"What the fuck?" came a startled voice from inside.
Johnny Bright, a.k.a. Fuck Nut, was now dressed in a wife beater and blue boxers. On the coffee table before him was a porn magazine. There were little boys on the cover. He had dropped his soft taco in his alarm, and had just wrapped his fingers around the handle of his own 9mm.
Standing in the doorway, I shot him four times in the chest.
When I was about three miles away, in a city called Fountain Valley, I pulled over to the side of the road and threw up my breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And I kept throwing up....
54.
He was waiting for me at the back of McDonald's. I sat down without ordering. I was still feeling sick to my stomach, and the thought of a greasy McGriddle did little to alleviate the queasiness.
I didn't look him in the eye, although I could feel his on me. Today, he was smelling especially ripe, as if he had slept in a dumpster. Hell, as if he was a dumpster.
A few minutes of this and I finally risked looking up. He was smiling at me kindly, and the love and warmth in his eyes was almost unbearable.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"What are you sorry for?" he asked.
"If you are God, you know."
We were silent some more. I didn't feel like playing his head games today. If he was God, then let him take the next step. If not, then I was content to sit across from him until the smell of frying bacon made me hurl. Which might be sooner rather than later.
"He was a very troubled man," said Jack.
"Yes, he was,"
"He made many poor choices."
I took in some air. The queasiness seemed to intensify as I relived Fuck Nut's last moments.
"Perhaps his poorest choice was threatening Cindy," said Jack.
I had never once mentioned Cindy's name to the man sitting across from me. The fact that he knew who she was should have amazed me, but in my current state of disarray, it was mostly lost on me.
"A very poor choice," I said.
"And you were forced to take action to protect her."
"Yes."
"So what are you sorry for?"
"For killing him."
"He wanted to die, Jim. He knew this day was coming. He was miserable and lonely and hated every day that he was alive."
I said nothing. I could not speak. His words did, however, ease some of the queasiness. I sat a little straighter even as I felt a little better.
"Is he going to hell?" I asked.
"He is in a place you do not want to be."
We'd had this discussion before and I didn't feel like getting into it now. There was no heaven or hell, but only worlds of our own creations. There was no punishment in the afterlife, only reflection and recreation. Blah blah blah. New age mumbo-jumbo. I didn't want to hear it. I had killed a man and that was my reality.
"He hurt a lot of kids, too," I said.
"Yes."
"Hey, I've got a fucking question for you, Jack...God, or whoever the fuck you are. Why the fuck did you allow him to hurt innocent kids? There you go. Answer that question. I'm sure there's a million mothers out there who've lost innocent children who'd just love an answer to that one. Oh, wait, never mind. You're just a bum and I'm a fucking idiot for coming in to a fucking McDonald's and entertaining the idea that you might be something more than just street trash." I stopped, took a deep breath.
"You done?" asked Jack.
I nodded, sitting back, my heart yammering in my chest.
"Nobody dies without the spirit's consent," said Jack.
"So a child who's kidnapped, raped and buried alive gives such a consent."
"Yes."
"But they're a fucking child, Jack. How the fuck could a child make that kind of a decision?"
"The decision was made long ago."
"Long ago? You mean in a place where time suddenly does exist?"
He ignored my sarcasm.
"Prior to taking on the body, the soul made an agreement with another soul - "
I cut him off; this was just pissing me off.
"An agreement to allow themselves to be raped and killed? How very generous of the soul."
Jack looked at me for a long moment.
"Yes," he said. "Very generous."
"And that's supposed to comfort a grieving mother? A mother who, say, just lost her child to a sick-ass motherfucker?"
"Such a death serves many purposes, Jim. There is a ripple effect that will touch many, many lives for generations to come."
"Fine. Many lives are touched. It's a noble act of sacrifice. But it's the thought of their child suffering that drives parents mad with grief. The fact that their baby suffered at the hands of an animal."
Jack said nothing, although he did finally sip his coffee. Glad to see he still had his taste for coffee.
Finally, he said, "You might be pleased to know that a spirit may leave the body whenever it wants."
"A child could leave its body?"
"Yes."
"And not suffer?"
Jack looked at me and smiled very deeply and kindly, and I saw, for the first time ever, that there were tears in his eyes.
"And not suffer," he said.
"You promise?"
"I promise."