A Thousand Steps

47

When the four men are seated, Furlong turns the tape recorder back on and picks up the Laguna Sunshine Farms mason jar. He holds it label-out for Matt to see, like he’s in a commercial.

“This is a jar of your mother’s prized stewed tomatoes,” he says. “Sliced. There are diced and whole available, too. She and another lady called Crazy Carol can these tomatoes in the packing house out in Dodge City. They sell some of them at a Brotherhood of Eternal Love organic produce stand on Laguna Canyon Road. Sound about right?”

Matt wishes he’d paid more attention when his mom was showing him the packing house. He already feels the need to defend her but he’s not sure from what.

He also wishes these people were out trying to find his sister rather than tormenting him with their paranoia of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.

“From what I know.”

“They’re supposed to be great tomatoes,” says Furlong. “So, of course I had to try them out.”

He unscrews the lid, smells the jar, and spoons two loads of the stewed, sliced tomatoes into the baking dish.

“These look pretty good. But what have we here?”

Furlong folds a paper towel and sets it in front of him. Then picks up the tongs, reaches into the mason jar, and pulls out a small plastic sheath dripping with red juice. He wipes it back and forth on the paper towel then lays it down.

“My first thought was, well, it’s some kind of spice pack that Laguna Sunshine Farms has told Julie Anthony or Crazy Carol to include in certain batches of the sliced tomatoes. Maybe recipes. So I read the jar label, but there’s nothing about a spice pack or recipes inside, or a toy, like in a box of cereal. So, what is it? Let’s see.”

Furlong unfolds the clear plastic sheath with his paws and uses two big fingers to extract a red rectangle from inside.

“Of course,” says Furlong. “Laguna Sunshine Farms includes a sheet of red paper wrapped in plastic in their canned, stewed tomatoes. Who wouldn’t? However, it looks a little unusual. For one thing, the sheet of what looks like paper is sectioned off into five rows of four roughly half-inch squares. Twenty, total. Each square is delineated by perforations, perfectly, symmetrically made. And look, each half-inch square of red paper has a small black outline of the sun on it, like a child’s drawing. Which looks very much like the childish sun in the upper left corner of the Summer of Eternal Love invitation you delivered to every business in Laguna. The invite that, ingested by twenty-five thousand low-IQ hippies and other drug fiends, led to dozens of overdoses and two deaths last Sunday. Not to mention hundreds of arrests and god knows how much brain damage.”

Furlong levels a look at Matt.

“It’s LSD, Matt,” says Chief Hein. “From a BEL-financed lab in Oakland.”

“It’s going out in shipments all around the country,” says Furlong. “Possibly the world. I hope to find some kind of sales data, or shipping logs when we raid Dodge City.”

Matt sees what’s shaping up here and he doesn’t like it one bit. Feels his anger spike at everything these cops are not doing.

“How many jars do they sell in a month?” asks McAdam.

“Matt?” asks Furlong, with raised eyebrows.

“How would I know?” he answers. “I do know that my sister was kidnapped almost three weeks ago and you haven’t come up with one solid lead.”

Silence, dead but brief.

“Your mother pretty much ran the operation until she fell on Sunday,” says Furlong.

“She just worked there,” says Matt. “It wasn’t an operation to her, it was just a job. It didn’t pay very well.”

Furlong lets that observation hang in the air.

Mike Saffalo, the district attorney, comes around the table for a better look at the perforated red paper. “They call it blotter acid, when it’s on paper like this,” he says. “It’s lighter and easier to transport than tablets. It’s also a federal offense if they’re using the United States Post Office to ship these drugs across state lines.”

“I can just about guarantee you they are,” says Furlong.

“‘Just about’ won’t cut much ice in court, Bill,” says Saffalo.

Furlong looks at Matt. “We’re working on that.”

“Sergeant,” asks Saffalo, “can you put a street value on this?”

“Sixty bucks — three dollars a trip. Times hundreds of mason jars. If not thousands over a year’s time. But the BEL isn’t doing this for money — they’re doing it to turn the world on.]In other, words, for fun.”

“Show him the high-dollar stuff,” says Chief Hein.

Furlong sets the tomatoes and baking dish aside, picks up the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and opens the lavish leather-and-stamped-gold cover.

He holds the elaborate title page up to Matt — a picture of a Tibetan holy man, meditating. He’s wearing a crimson robe, much like that of Mahajad Om.

“Nice title page,” says Furlong. “But after that, the plot fizzles out. There’s not another written word in the whole volume.”

Furlong, still holding the book up, turns the title page to reveal the book’s first page — a white sheet of paper, perforated similarly to the canned stewed tomatoes from Laguna Sunshine Farms. Matt, with 20/10 vision, can see hundreds of beaming little suns from where he sits. These Tibetan Book of the Dead pages are much larger than the mason jar inserts.

“Same blotter acid as in the tomatoes,” says Furlong. “Same half-inch squares, white instead of red. But each sheet in this book is seven by nine inches, which gives you two hundred and fifty-two doses of LSD per sheet. There are three hundred and eighty pages in the book, which means one hundred and ninety sheets. The grand total is forty-seven thousand eight hundred and eighty hits of acid. At three bucks a pop, this Tibetan Book of the Dead is worth one hundred forty-three thousand, six hundred and forty dollars. Johnny Grail has a storage room full of these things at Mystic Arts, according to Matt here.”

“Not full,” says Matt. “I never said it was full. I only ever saw a few copies of that book. I also saw two strong men drag my sister into a van a hundred feet from this police station, in case you’re interested. In case you’re interested in kidnapping instead of a Tibetan Book of the Dead my mother has nothing to do with.”

Hein sighs and Saffalo clears his throat.

Furlong shrugs, opens his hands. “Stay with me, Matt. Every book has almost forty-eight thousand doses of LSD in it. Do you know how many people could lose their minds forever on this shit? That’s what I’m talking about here. The human cost. In brain cells. In suicides and addictions and accidents. I’m talking about your mother, Julie Anthony.”

“Matt, is this the same book that you delivered to Marlon Sungaard?” asks Detective McAdam. “Two copies?”

Again, Furlong looks to Matt.

“I thought they were just books!”

He suddenly remembers that Jazz had done similar errands for Johnny Grail and the BEL. Had she been fooled too, or did she know? Had she done something to the BEL to get herself kidnapped? But how could Johnny Grail do something that evil, and what good could it possibly do him? How could Grail act like a friend if the BEL has Jazz?

Furlong loudly drops the book on the table. Pushes it aside and squares the box of Languedoc Toffees in front of him and lifts the lid. Tilting it up to Matt, he pulls away the dark brown bubbly wrap, revealing the big round candies inside. They’re wrapped in gold foil and look the size of Ping-Pong balls. They look pretty damned good after his hasty peanut butter and jelly burrito for breakfast.

“Don’t tell me,” Matt says. “The toffee in the middle is really LSD.”

Furlong shakes his head. “No. Inside, they’re plastic-wrapped dragon balls, double-dipped in chocolate. They’ve got very high opium-to-hash ratio. The foil, plastic, chocolate, and box wrapping throws off the drug dogs’ noses. These things are packaged in Afghanistan and smuggled into Laguna by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Each box is thirty dragon balls — worth about twenty-four hundred on the street. As you know, Laguna Beach is awash in Afghan dragon balls. We’ve got dragon ball addicts sleeping in the streets, on the beaches, in the parks. Look what these things did to your mom.”

“She beat the opium, I told you.”

“Matt,” says Furlong. “I’ve talked to Dr. Caroline Hoppe at South Coast Hospital. Getting off the poppies isn’t as easy as Julie makes it sound, especially on top of her spectacular acid overdose and near death. The pain she’s in? And living in Dodge City, where she can get whatever dope she wants from those stoned-out hippies and dealers? So, we’ll see about her kicking the dragon balls. But I certainly hope she can, because we’ll need her to testify at Johnny Grail’s trial. That’s after we’ve arrested him for narcotics distribution, felony mail fraud, furnishing narcotics and alcohol to children, and second-degree murder.”

“Murder?” asks Matt.

“The two overdose deaths at the Summer of Eternal Love festival,” says DA Saffalo. “Grail could be looking at life in prison.”

Matt tries to imagine life in prison. Minutes ago, he had broken into a clammy sweat at the idea of a year in the Youth Leadership Center at Juvenile Hall. But the rest of his life in prison? That, he cannot imagine.

Neither can he imagine doing what Furlong asks him to do.

“You’re going to help us set up and take down Johnny Grail,” says Furlong. “Or we will be forced to arrest you and your mother for pretty much the same charges we’ll bring against Grail and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Which will mean the Youth Leadership Center for you, and the new women’s jail in Santa Ana for Julie. Nice place. Brand new. Set to open in a couple of months.”

Matt sits, stunned.

The door opens and one of the police dispatch operators comes in. She’s walking fast, leaning forward at the waist, casting furtive eyes around the room. Goes to Chief Hein, cups a hand to whisper something in his ear. He takes the news without expression. Nods slightly. Waits. When she’s done, she leaves as quickly as she came, with a quick look at Matt.

Hein sighs deeply. “Laguna Beach PD has engaged a suspected drug supplier in South Laguna, just minutes ago. The officer fired in self-defense and the suspect died at the scene. He’s a local man, Luke Lucas. They call him Hamsa Luke. You must know him, Matt. He worked at Mystic Arts World.”

Matt can barely hear Chief Hein’s words through the rushing in his ears.

He’s terrified by this news, but not surprised by it. It had to happen to someone, didn’t it?

He can bear no more. Something inside him breaks loose of its moorings.

“I need to use the bathroom,” he says.

The chief looks to Furlong, who walks Matt to the station visitors’ restroom.

“Matt, I’m sorry about your friend.”

“I don’t believe you. And he wasn’t my friend but I liked him.”

“I truly am. But listen — you’re doing well in there. We’re almost done.”

“Okay.”

“You’re going to like my game plan.”

A minute later Matt is pulling off a paper towel to dry his hands. He looks at himself in the mirror, which is not glass but stainless steel, because glass can be a weapon. It gives his face a funny lopsided shape. His heart is pounding and his breath is short. He takes in a big breath, lets it out slowly, then again.

He prays: God, this is Matt. Let Furlong not be there when I go out, and I’ll do anything you want, forever. Amen.

And when he steps from the bathroom, Furlong is in fact not there. Matt looks down the hallway, sees the conference room door ajar.

Anything you want! Thank you!

He nods to the young desk officer on his way through the lobby, and tries to look casual on his way out.

Thirty seconds and he’s pulling the Westfalia away from the Third Street curb — his heart racing and the exhaust pipe sputtering — headed for he knows not where.

Someplace they won’t think to look for him.

He stops at a pay phone and digs out change to call Tommy Amici. Stands inside the hot glass booth, hands shaking. It seriously bums him out to have to give Tommy this news, but Furlong will be all over Matt if he tries to do his paper route today.

Matt has never been wanted by the cops. And he’s never been threatened with juvie or by anyone as frightening as Dr. Hamilton. Combined, they give him a gnawing, knee-melting feeling. He won’t be able to show his face for more than a moment in Dodge, or near his father’s Third Street rental, or at Mystic Arts World, unless he uses the Bat Cave that Johnny Grail probably shouldn’t have told him about. He can’t do his paper route. Can’t go to South Coast Hospital for more than a quick, paranoid visit with his mom. Can’t park the Westfalia anyplace where Furlong would think to look for it.

And where will he sleep?

He’s got just under five dollars to his name, the ten-dollar down payment on the Wyatt Earp revolver having cut deeply into his finances. A motel would empty his wallet quick. And what about food? Have to catch some serious fish to both eat and cut costs, he thinks.

But from his mouth come words he never thought he’d say:

“Tommy, I can’t do the route for a few days. Can you cover for me?”

“What? You haven’t missed a day in over two years!”

“I know. I’m sorry. Give me two days, Tommy.”

Silence. “Is this about Jasmine?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus! Jesus. Matt, I can cover your route today and tomorrow. I’ll do that for you and for her. But if you’re not back on your bike day after tomorrow, I’ll have to hire a new kid. There’s a waiting list, Matt. I can’t keep a route open for someone who’s not showing up. My boss won’t let me. You’ve won an Outstanding Carrier medal two years running. Now this?”

“I appreciate it, Tommy.”

“Have you talked to her again? Is she okay?”

“I heard from her, kind of.”

“Two days, Matt — that’s all I can give you.”

“The cops killed Hamsa Luke.”

“When? Why?”

“I don’t know. South Laguna.”

“There were rumors about him.”

“There’s rumors about everybody.”

“He seemed like a cool guy.”

Matt hangs up.