California Girl

18

JANELLE VONN’S PALE BLUE Volkswagen Beetle sat in the shade of the impound yard. Hood up, engine compartment open, a layer of windblown dust on the windows. Nick and Lucky Lobdell looked down on it in the brisk fall morning.

It was Monday, October 14, thirteen days after the murder of Janelle Vonn. Nick could feel his case was cooling off. His evidence wasn’t adding up. The clues still out there had scurried under rocks and were going to be harder and harder to find.

He was losing his momentum in this case and he knew it. Made his guts feel jerky and his head feel crowded.

And all of this after he was sure he’d caught the break he needed. When Red turned out to be the Reverend David and Ho turned out to be Janelle’s benefactor Howard Langton. An absolute gift from heaven, delivered by his own brother, Andy.

But even that had dribbled off into uselessness. The date-David and Barbara, Howard and Linda, Janelle and whatever guy she might choose-had been canceled. No one knew why. The evening itself would have been nothing unusual. They had had dinner dates before.

So Nick couldn’t escape the sinking feeling in his guts. First-case jinx? Maybe he wasn’t ready for his own case? Maybe he was too careful?

Maybe he didn’t have the experience to connect things or ask the right questions. Maybe he didn’t have the stamina it took to miss your wife and kids and not sleep well and go over the same bits of evidence over and over and over. He thought of Sharon and his whole soul groaned. Because he missed her, too, and because he wished he’d never touched her.

And maybe it was just him, but Nick thought the captain was humoring him at the homicide detail wrap on Friday. And the assistant sheriff was subtly dismissing his efforts at the Crime Against Persons roll call on Thursday.

“What exactly are we doing?” asked Lobdell.

“I wanted to see this car again.”

Lobdell ran his finger across a back window. Left a dark streak in the dust.

“Your case,” said Lobdell.

“Yeah, I know.”

Nick stood by the driver’s-side door and read again the responding officer’s report on a suspicious vehicle. Filed five days after the murder. Lemon Heights Sporting Goods owner made the call, said the car had been in the lot out front since the night in question. Hadn’t moved. He had seen it come across the lot that night, late, maybe nine. Cute little Beetle. Shiny under the lights. Went to the far side of the parking lot where there weren’t any cars. The owner looked out a few minutes later and saw the car still there and this girl standing beside a white Caddy talking to the driver. Got in the Caddy about ten minutes after nine and the car drove off.

Lemon Heights Sporting Goods was in a shopping center less than two hundred yards from the SunBlesst packinghouse.

The Beetle was only one year old. Nine thousand miles according to the impound report. No dents that Nick could see. Good tread on the tires. He checked the tread grooves for the odd bit of gravel or dirt that might be revealing. Found nothing.

Lobdell shook his head and sighed. “I gotta call Shirley.”

Nick sat on the passenger side and looked at the fingerprint dust on the dash, door handles and window cranks, the shifter, hand brake, and steering wheel. The silver powder showed up best on the black plastic. All the prints had been processed. All were Janelle’s.

Nick got down on his knees with a magnifier and tweezers and went over the floor mats. ID had done it once but he wanted to do it again. Hair. Fiber. Small gravel. The bright red point of what looked like a liquidambar or maple leaf. October, he thought, right color for the time of year. He didn’t collect, he just looked. Then the passenger’s side and the back. Nothing unusual.

He sat in the front passenger seat. The glove compartment had a pair of sunglasses, a small pump bottle of Orange Sunshine air freshener, and a clear plastic makeup bag. Inside the bag Nick found base and blush, three lipsticks. Two brushes, two eyeliner pencils, and mascara.

He sprayed the air freshener toward the open door and whiffed. The smell was faint and familiar. Sprayed some on his fingertips and rubbed it with his thumb. Not strong, really. Just a hint of orange blossom. Sprayed and rubbed again. No, not like those late winter mornings when all of Tustin used to smell that way. Paradise would be like that. Nick had always thought if he could bottle that smell he could make a million. His mother used to say so. He and Clay had tried it one day, mashing up the blossoms and adding water. By the next morning, through some alchemical magic that bewildered them, the solution retained no smell whatsoever. But here in sixty-eight, thought Nick, somebody had finally captured a little of that smell.

He saw that Janelle had replaced her Blaupunkt radio with a Craig eight-track tape player/radio combination. Pretty nice one. Eighty, a hundred bucks installed. There was a shoe box of tapes on the passenger-side floor. Nick looked at the titles and set it down.

The side map pouches had more eight-tracks. A pencil and two pens. Two books of matches-Five Crowns from her job a year ago, and one from Bob’s Big Boy. No maps.

The ashtray contained an alligator roach clip with a decorative thong of leather and three beads attached. The tray itself had a light dusting of ash.

Nick got out and lifted the front trunk door. Neat and practically empty. A spare tire, jumper cables, and a first-aid kit. The engine compartment was clean, no leaks or bad hoses that he could see. Nick looked at the tiny little motor. Air-cooled and practically powerless. A guy at his high school put radiator coolant in the oil reservoir, blew his engine. You could get a new VW for under two grand and they went forever on a tank of gas. But gas was cheap and there was no way to argue with V-8 power.

Nick got pliers and a flat-tip screwdriver from his kit and sat in the passenger seat. Pried off the door trim panel. Looked where the stoners liked to hide their stash. No stash, just the door latch assembly and the window crank with its toothed gear swabbed with grease.

He worked the trim panel back into place.

Lobdell ambled over from the yard office. “They already looked there.”

“Get off my back, Lucky.”

“We got the last three saw stores to check.”

Nick drove. He could feel the tension coming off Lobdell, low-voltage but steady.

“What’s up?” Nick asked.

“Kevin said some bad things to his mother. I won’t tolerate it under my roof. Kid can say what he wants to me. But Shirley, shit. Shirley lives for that boy.”

IN THE FIRST three days after the murder, Nick and Lobdell had found twenty-six Orange County stores that sold the Garden Forge Trim-Quick pruning saw. When they factored in south Los Angeles and north San Diego Counties, the number got up to almost a hundred. So far they had gotten through twenty-three. Three leads had proved fruitless. One still working. They had started with the stores closest to the SunBlesst packinghouse in Tustin. Now they were almost up to the Los Angeles County line, Nick increasingly pissed off that nothing was connecting up for him.

Nick drove and Lobdell looked out the window.

None of the clerks at Canning’s Hardware in La Habra remembered selling a Trim-Quick recently.

The owner of a nursery in Fullerton sold one to a young mother with two children just last week.

A garden supplies manager at the Sears, Roebuck over by Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park had sold one Trim-Quick to a man in shorts and a straw gardener’s hat two Sundays ago. The Sunday before Janelle was murdered, thought Nick.

“I’ve seen him in here before,” said the manager. “Always Sundays. Don’t know his name. Nice fella. Brown hair, neat mustache, medium height and weight. Didn’t see much of his face that day, because of the hat.”

Maybe that was the point, thought Nick. He remembered that two Sundays ago it was ninety degrees.

“Guess his age.”

“Thirty-five to forty. He also got snail bait, a flat of marigolds, potting soil, and a hand trowel. Paid cash, so don’t ask me to find the check.”

“Maybe you’d call me if you see him in here again,” said Nick. He supplied a card and the manager put it in the pocket of his blue apron.

They were walking back out of the garden section of Sears when Nick saw the entire room tilt left, then right again. Like a ship. He stopped, braced himself. Lifted his arms for balance. Then lowered them to his side, embarrassed.

“What gives?” huffed Lobdell.

“Balance a little off.”

Like getting hit on the head by Ethan. Fourteen years ago and still not quite right. Never told anybody and maybe should have. To his irritation Nick watched a row of potted rhododendrons scoot forward, then move back. All six in unison. Like a dance step. Slick.

He breathed deeply, shook his head. Looked at Lobdell and felt better.

“I got conked when I was a kid,” he said. “Every once in a while I just lose my balance for a second.”

“Great,” said Lobdell. “Hope it doesn’t happen when you’re covering my butt with your forty-five.”

“I could only cover part of it anyway,” said Nick. He laughed but Lobdell didn’t. “Monkey Wards is next.”

By the time they finished striking out at Wards, Nick wasn’t sure if he was really walking or not. The merchandise in the aisles was going past him but he wasn’t aware of moving his legs or feet. The products advanced, reds and yellows and blues coming at high speed, then curlicuing upward like colored smoke and vanishing into the ceiling. A set of wrenches glided slowly through the room.

Outside the sunlight wavered in an orange mirage. Lobdell was talking as they made the car. Nick could hardly understand the words but he could see them wobbling through the air toward him like balloons filled with water.

“I don’t feel right, Lucky.”

“You’re acting wrong, Nick. The fuck’d you have for breakfast?”

“Katy made pancakes and eggs. Onions in the eggs.”

“I’ll drive.”

“Thanks.”

THEY MADE the 11:45 A.M. meeting with Captain Frank del Gado. Nick couldn’t look him in the eye for more than a second or two. Del Gado’s skin ran off like melting wax and Nick felt an urge to giggle. Even with the office door closed Nick heard things from the other side with startling volume and clarity. He felt that his ears had grown to huge proportion. Felt the bones in his face growing.

Lobdell had agreed to do the talking. “We just wanted to follow up on this rumor about the beauty queen being on the narcotics payroll,” he said.

Del Gado was a sleek sixty, black hair combed straight back from a widow’s peak. Goddamned Eddie Munster, thought Nick.

“Yeah,” said del Gado. “So?”

“How long?” asked Lobdell.

“We worked with her during that thing with her brothers. We thought she might be helpful with where the pills and pot were coming from, and she was. All of her brothers were tied up with the Hessians. You get bikers, you get amphetamines. They make the damned things, zoom around the country distributing. Anyway, when the brother thing was over, we kept her on. You’d be amazed what people offered Miss Tustin, age eighteen.”

“Was she using?” Nick managed.

Del Gado’s gaze seemed eternal. “Enough to gain the confidence of certain people. Informants are free to do what they want. Within limits.”

“How high up the ladder was she?” asked Lobdell. “Big boys, medium-sized, what?”

Del Gado tapped a Zippo on his desktop. Painfully loud. Nick jumped, rising from his chair to cover it and hoping the captain hadn’t seen. He went to the window, looked out, then casually sat back down.

“Not big,” del Gado said, looking at Nick.

“What did you pay her?” asked Lobdell.

“It varied. Up to three hundred a month.”

“That’s pretty good money for nothing big,” said Lobdell. Nick actually heard the words before they were spoken.

“Sometimes she was useful.”

“Sir,” said Nick. “We need to talk to those drug people. Her connections and sources and friends. If one of them found out she was a snitch, that’s a motive to kill her.” He lurched up and went to the window again, hoping he looked upset and serious. Took a deep breath, fighting the smile off his face.

“Talk to Troy Gant,” said del Gado. “He’s waiting outside.”

GANT WAS SHORT and grubby. Stringy yellow hair, an attempted mustache, beat-up jeans and a loose sweatshirt with the sleeves cut out. He looked eighteen, maybe twenty. He looked at Lobdell with an openly hopeless expression. Turned his soft blue eyes on Nick and stared right through him.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s motate.”

“Motate,” said Nick. “Like ‘move’ and ‘activate.’”

“Right on, Sarge.”

Gant led them down a hallway past a watercooler and a fire alarm box. Then into an empty conference room. A movie screen at one end, projector at the other. A tape recorder sat on one of the three horseshoed tables.

Gant shut the door. “You gotta be real careful here,” he said. “Janelle was working with some people. I’m working with some of the same people. You want to talk to them, talk to them. They can’t hurt her now. But you ask your questions just a little wrong, mix up something she could have told you for something only I could know and guess what, man-I’m seriously fuckin’ blown. Let me tell you two guys something. Narcotics isn’t about fun anymore. It isn’t about young people experimenting anymore. It isn’t about cosmic consciousness, no matter what the Brotherhood of Eternal Love says. It’s about big dollars and strong dope. It’s about permanently scrambled eggs and overdoses that stop your heart cold. It’s about distribution and profit and getting product on the street so every man, woman, and child can fork over the cash and turn on. Laguna? Janelle’s world? Bad people doing bad shit. Even del Gado underestimates it. Clear on that?”

“I think we can handle it,” said Lobdell.

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” said Gant. “You thinking you can handle it because you’re a big tough dude from homicide. You don’t know piss about narco.”

Nick nodded.

Gant’s eyes bore into Nick again. Silver fish leaping out of them, landing on the desk. Gant held up one finger and ran it up close across Nick’s field of vision.

“With all respect, Investigator Becker, what the hell are you tripping on?” asked Gant.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know I was. I mean, I don’t know what’s going on. Del Gado’s face melted and now there’s fish all over the desk. And the tools at Sears-”

“Here.”

Gant took him by one arm-surprisingly strong for a little guy-and walked Nick back outside. Down the hall and into a bathroom. Ran some water in the sink, got Nick’s face down close to it and splashed him good. Soaked some paper towels. Got his neck and hair. Walked Nick over to a stall and sat him down.

“What’d you take, Sarge?” he asked quietly.

“Eggs and-”

“Not food. Not breakfast. Something else.”

“Coffee in the cafeteria.”

“Something else. You smoke something funny, maybe?”

“I pretty much quit cigarettes two years ago.”

Nick tried to think of everything he’d put in his mouth since getting up.

“Tell me what you did this morning,” said Troy Gant.

Nick went through it. Detail by detail. Amazing to him that he could remember it. He was trying to explain the almost-orange-blossom smell of Janelle Vonn’s air freshener when Gant sighed. He put a hand on Nick’s shoulder.

Sitting on the toilet with a weird narc touching him sent a shiver of panic up Nick’s backbone. Never claustrophobic but he felt that way now. Suffocating. Ugly thoughts and smells. He almost jumped up to run for it but the sinks behind Gant were breathing in and out, enlarging, then decreasing. Enlarging, then decreasing.

“You took a dose of Orange Sunshine LSD,” Troy said. “Janelle got it from Tim Leary. Leary got it from Ronnie Joe Fowler. Fowler gets it from a lab up near San Francisco that nobody can find. What you got through your skin pores is pure LSD dissolved in distilled water. Instead of pills, the acid gurus are taking it orally. One spray in your mouth, you’re flying in twenty minutes. On your hands, like happened to you-forty minutes. The air freshener label is their idea of being clever and funny. It actually fooled us for about a month because the label was so good.”

“Goddamn,” said Nick. “I can’t believe this stuff was legal until a couple of years ago.”

“Strong shit,” said Gant.

“He’s been acting like a complete nutcase,” said Lobdell.

Gant helped Nick off the toilet. “Get him downstairs and drive him home. Nick, don’t stop and rap with your buddies or the whole department’s going to know. I’m going to give you Ronnie Joe Fowler’s numbers. And a couple more people in Janelle’s group. And some of the reports I wrote up, based on her information. But besides that I’m not going to tell you a single thing. I’m done. I don’t exist for you. See me on the street, man-any street in the world-and just walk the other way.”

“Yes,” said Nick.

“I’ll call you in a couple of hours,” said Gant.

“How long’s this going to last?”

“One spray on your fingers about ten o’clock? And a whiff of another? You’ll start coming down about five or six tonight. You’ll still be high when you fall asleep, if you do.”

“Whopping hangover?”

“You’ll feel fine,” said Gant. “You’ll remember all the cool stuff. You’ll want to try it again sometime.”

“Wow. Not so sure about that.”

“See? That’s what I mean. You may think homicide is tough, but narco is just plain scary. By the way, eat plenty. A couple of strong cocktails will help you come down. And one more thing-get the creep who killed her. She was a sweet girl.”

“DAD’S HOME EARLY!”

“GIVE ME MY BATMOBILE!”

“QUIET! Honey, is everything okay?”

Nick stood blinking in the doorway. The orange wool carpet Katy had recently bought for the living room undulated like a field of windblown barley, stretching before him, out the sliding glass doors, across the backyard, over the flood control channel that ran behind their house, all the way to the horizon. Nick thought that he’d like to see the precise line where the orange carpet met the sky.

He turned and waved away Lobdell.

“Is everything okay, Nick?”

“Is everything okay, Dad?”

“Yes,” he said, stepping into the entryway. He knelt down and hugged Katherine and Stevie, both home with colds. Willie was at school.

“Do you feel okay, honey?” asked Katy.

He rose and smiled at her. She was huge and beautiful to him. Life rippled off her in visible vibrations, waves of shimmering purple and yellow.

“I see your beauty in a whole new way, Katy,” he said. She smiled guardedly. “I’d started to think you were beautiful like a new truck or one of those big airliners they fly to New York. But you’re not that at all. It’s more to do with grace and blood. Not function, but…form.”

Katy’s mouth fell open. He saw the hardness come to her eyes. The sudden worry.

“Katherine, Steven-go to your rooms.”

“But-”

“But-”

“NOW!”

“God, that’s loud,” Nick said. Felt the sound waves pulverizing his eardrums.

“Come with me,” said Katy. She took his arm where Gant had taken it and led him back to the bedroom.

She closed the door and asked for his explanation.

After he told her she went out to check the children, came back in, locked the door, and stripped off his clothes. She made love to him three times that afternoon, in between lunch, laundry, getting Katherine and Steven down for naps, and picking up Willie at the bus stop.

By evening Nick felt like he’d been blasted through an entire universe of sex. Then pulled back through it to earth and his bed. Spent and empty. Whole body limp. Katy brought him dinner. And six fingers of scotch and ice with a little water in a giant red plastic tumbler.

Bloated with sensation, Nick curled up under the sheets naked and watched squadrons of identical purple tulips scroll down his inner vision. Then red Ford Country Squire station wagons with wood-look siding and 428s in them. Then blue fire hydrants. Then Janelle Vonn’s disembodied head. She was alive and speaking but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. A thousand Janelles. He tried to say something back but he couldn’t move his mouth.

He slept for eleven hours. Woke up at six in time to pour Willie a bowl of Sugar Spangled Rice Krinkles.

Felt great.