California Girl

38

THE NEXT EVENING I drove up to the Stoltzes’ house in the Tustin hills. Nice place, most of it behind a wall but no gate. You can drive right in.

Tustin’s different now. Orange trees long gone. Even out in Bryan and Myford and Irvine not a grove left. Houses packed in tight. Car dealerships and franchised everything, one big shopping opportunity. Doesn’t have a smell anymore, not like oranges anyway. Used to be a sign on the Fourth Street freeway exit that said “Welcome to Tustin-the Beverly Hills of Orange County.” Not really sure who came up with that one, or when they took it down.

Roger and Marie were in the front yard. Big straw hats and baggy nylon pants. U.S. Representative Roger Stoltz closing in on seventy-seven years, serving out his last term. Marie even older than that. Millionaires fifty times over from Orange Sunshine cleanser but still lived where they’d always lived. Bigger place is all.

They stared at me as I pulled up. Waved when I got out. Marie went into the house and I heard a screen door rattle shut.

“Hello, Nick Becker,” said Roger. “What brings you to these parts?”

I shook his hand. Strong, warm, and dry. “That’s a hard one to answer.”

“Is that a fact?” He looked at my briefcase. Frowned.

“Maybe you and I should talk in private, Roger.”

“Whatever you say. But Marie went to get lemonade for us so don’t hurt her feelings. Here, sit in the shade a minute and be social.”

I set my briefcase down next to a round redwood picnic table under a magnolia. Four little curved benches. Fresh lacquer on the wood and the magnolia heavy with big white flowers.

Stoltz sat and stared toward the wall. Still had the crisp mustache. His black hair had gone white and waxy but it was still there. Sharp eyes, no glasses. Little U.S. flag pin on his shirt pocket. You see those a lot these days. I thought of Terry Neemal’s description of the man he saw that night. Walking up the steps of the SunBlesst packinghouse with something bulky slung over his shoulder. Regular-sized.

We didn’t elicit that testimony because Cory Bonnett was six-four. Abbott Estle found it but the People argued that it was night. Neemal was a hundred and fifty feet away. What’s the difference in inches between six-four and “regular-sized”? Two inches? Four? In the dark with something big over the shoulders?

“Janelle again?” asked Stoltz.

“Yes. Janelle.”

Marie came from the house. A stocky Latino walked behind her with a tray and three tall lemonades. Marie was hunched and very small. Took her forever to get to the little table. The helper set out the drinks and napkins. Glanced at me. Headed back up the walk. Marie took one long look at Roger and a short look at me and said, “I’ll be in the house if you need me.”

“Thanks, darling.” He raised his cheek to her and she kissed it. Barely had to stoop. Labored back up the walkway to the porch.

“So,” said Stoltz. He was still staring at the wall. “I saw Andy and Lynette last week. My party in Georgetown.”

“He told me.”

“He had quite a little talk with Martha,” said Stoltz.

“She told him about writing your telegram.”

Stoltz smiled. His teeth were small and even and surprisingly white. “I remember that. Poor girl so worried about everything. Best staffer I ever had for running an office. And she really understood the Communist threat. Kept her thirty-six years, which tells you something.”

“She told Andy about trying to call you for help with that telegram. The telegram about Janelle.”

He looked at me again. “Yes, I remember that.”

“And Martha mentioned you coming and going three times in three days, couldn’t find you. Andy thought that was odd. Andy talked to the Congressional Travel Office. Checked the House disbursements statements for October sixty-eight and found out you flew back to California about four P.M. the day Janelle was killed.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“Everyone told us you were in D.C. that night, sir.”

“Are you sure about this plane flight?”

“I’m sure.”

Stoltz considered me. Forgot about the wall. Turned to face me squarely. “I’m failing to see the point. This proves nothing, Nick.”

I opened my briefcase, which turns on the tape recorder. Set a small plastic first-aid box on the lacquered redwood tabletop. Popped it open. Inside there were no scissors or tape or disinfectant. Just dry ice and a small plastic bag with something black in it.

I set the bag on the table. Stoltz looked at it, then up at me, then down at the finger again.

“This proves something,” I said. I set one of the Regentech reports on the table. Put the bagged finger on top of it. Black on white. “I had a private lab cook up the DNA from the flesh under Janelle’s fingernail. That finger right there.”

Stoltz stared at me with a cagey glitter in his eyes. “What, some amateurish laboratory in San Diego?”

“One of the best. The flesh is yours.”

Stoltz looked at me like he was intrigued. “Okay. Just say that’s true for the sake of argument. Say that flesh is mine. Even say I killed the girl. What would you do?”

“Get Bonnett out.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes, why? He killed at least two men in Mexico, you know. Beat his parents. Sold God knows how many pounds of dope to this country’s youth. To young people like Janelle. Nick, justice has been done.”

“Not with you sitting in your front yard it hasn’t.”

“Would you ruin your own career over a nothing like Cory Bonnett?”

I shrugged. Pushed the lab report and finger closer to him. Made sure the finger was pointing right at him. Crude, but at the bureau we learned this kind of thing really works. Hit the guy with something physical. I’d wrapped the bloody old Trim-Quick in a clean pillowcase. Took it out of my briefcase and set it beside the report. If the SunBlesst packinghouse were still standing I’d have taken him back there for this conversation.

Stoltz looked at these things. Frowned. Still a little detached.

“A reputation is all a man really has, Nick.”

“Touch the finger if you want,” I said. “Take it out of the bag if you want to.”

Stoltz stared down at it. Touched it through the plastic. Looked back at me. He had a very different expression on his face by then. The look of acceptance.

I pictured myself as a small red sailboat beginning to circle Roger Stoltz’s drain. Circling the current of his logic and his despair. Closing in on the center. The black suckhole of corrupted reason that justifies a horrible act. I’ve spent a lifetime learning what these drains look like. How to enter and exit them without drowning. Everyone’s got one. Some are small and easy to find. For small lies and small secrets. But some are enormous and cunningly concealed. Like an underground river. They can carry anything you can imagine. And sometimes much more.

Stoltz was seventy-six years old. He’d been waiting thirty-six years for this.

So I let go and began to circle.

“Sure, Roger,” I said. “A man’s reputation is important. But some people have a conscience, too. You do. I’ve known it for sixty-something years. You’ve done nothing but good things for me and my family.”

“Yes. And I did think very highly of Janelle.”

“I know you did. And I understand why you had to do it, Roger. I understand what it must have been like.”

A gray tiger cat jumped into Stoltz’s lap. Skinny, green eyes. Could hear his motor from where I sat. Stoltz ran a gnarled hand down its back and tried to fix me with his tough old eyes. But he blinked.

“I loved her,” he said. “Really, genuinely, truly loved her. I offered her everything I had. The material things were the least of it.”

Stoltz’s forehead wrinkled with sad sincerity. “I offered to divorce Marie and marry Janelle. To provide her with a fine home and travel and an education and the means to raise her child. She didn’t even know who the father was! Do you know what it feels like, Mr. Becker, to offer everything and be refused?”

I studied the intensity on Stoltz’s face. I couldn’t find even a trace of doubt in it. He believed. And I knew then, from a lifetime of hearing confessions, that Stoltz would tell me everything. It’s always the guys who think they were right who tell you everything.

“The tragedy of Janelle and me, Mr. Becker, were the drugs and the men who gave her the drugs. Starting with her brothers. The drugs ate her away from inside. You saw her beauty. I know you did. My God, when she was crowned Miss Tustin! But you never saw inside her, did you? Let me tell you, she was empty. Black. Janelle was a wasteland of everything this life can offer. A wasteland of life itself. Of all my love and all my plans. Of her own potential. And I was supposed to let that one small but tremendous hope slip down an abortionist’s drain? It would have been monstrous. I had to do something.”

Destroy the village in order to save it.

Destroy the woman in order to save her.

Destroy a life in order to save it.

“I do understand your logic, Roger.”

Stoltz looked at me then as a man of faith. A man who wanted to share that faith. Have it believed by someone other than just himself.

The cat hopped onto the table. Nosed Stoltz’s lemonade glass.

“She came to Tustin that night and I met her in the Sav-On parking lot. Took my Caddy to the Newport apartment. A pretty blue sweater and a black miniskirt. Boots. Hair so fresh and dark and sweet. My God, she was beautiful. She told me she didn’t want to see me again. Wanted to completely break off our friendship. She told me I’d become too forceful and demanding. I wanted too much from her. She had bought me a St. Christopher pendant to protect me on my ‘travels’ away from her. She put it around my neck. And I don’t know what happened at that point, Mr. Becker, but I suddenly became more forceful and demanding than I had ever been. More than I had ever imagined I could be. It was more than just sexual. More than just anger. I was compelled. I was possessed. It was the first and only time I did that to her. She resisted. It was an unbearable pleasure to overpower her. And I’ll admit, Mr. Becker, I made a mistake. I overreacted. I panicked. When I put her in the trunk I saw the new pruning saw that had fallen out of its bag. The packinghouse seemed like a good place to take her. I don’t know what I’d have done if the lock had been locked. Threw her purse in the grove. And it seemed to me, Mr. Becker…it seemed to me-”

Stoltz paused and fixed me with his dark eyes again. The cat put its nose to the finger, sniffed twice. Then to the saw, sniffed twice. Curled away in minor fear and hopped off the table.

“It seemed to me that the best way to protect myself was to do something hateful to her. Do something that only a man who hated her could do. So, the saw. Because it was not something that a man who loved her would ever do.”

“That’s reasonable.”

“The blade came off and I took it. I had no idea what to do with it but I knew I might use it. An hour later I had showered at the Motel 6 on Tustin Avenue and I sat on the bed and looked at the blank TV screen and figured I’d blame it on Cory Bonnett. I had to do something. I’d already had a private eye investigate him for me. I wanted to know who Janelle was seeing. About bankrupted me, there were so many. Cory seemed most believable as a murderer. As soon as he heard about her he left the country. He knew the police would suspect him. Which made it easy to get in and out of his garage. Good luck for me that we drove similar cars. Very good.”

“Where did you get the saw you showed me back in sixty-eight, in your potting shed?”

“Bought it out in McLean, Virginia, a few days after Janelle. Checked it through in my suitcase. It came in handy, didn’t it? More lemonade?”

“Sure.”

“Marie!” Stoltz’s eyes were glassy with tears and his voice cracked so he had to call her again.

“So now what, Becker?”

“I’ll talk to the DA. If you’ll sign a confession it will make things easy for everyone. If not, you’ll be arrested and tried.”

“On the basis of what?”

“Andy’s conversations with Martha and the ticket purchases. The DA will order another DNA comparison and the flesh under Janelle’s nails will be shown to be yours. The tape recording I just made might not get into evidence but it will sure get the DA investigators pointed in the right direction.”

The screen door slammed. Marie came slowly toward us. The man behind her had a tray with a pitcher on it. I put the finger and saw and report back into my briefcase in plenty of time.

When she was done pouring the lemonade Marie smiled at me. Kissed her husband again and began the long journey back to the house.

“I’ll need a few days to get things in order around here,” said Stoltz.

“No. We’re going now. It took me thirty-six years and I’m not waiting one more hour.”

“Afraid I’ll run?”

“Or kill Marie and yourself.”

That glint in his eyes again. “Let me take a leak. Put on some decent clothes. Get a lawyer to meet us down there.”

“Okay.”

I followed Roger in. He walked slowly. Looked around like he might not ever see any of it again. Which he wouldn’t. Nice home. Cool and roomy. Old furniture. Funny wallpaper. Marie sitting in the big living room all alone with the TV on. The hired man doing something in the kitchen.

Marie eyed us as we walked toward the bedroom.

I watched Roger get a shirt and pants from the closet. Lay them over one shoulder. Socks, underpants, and what-have-you from a chest of drawers.

I followed him toward the bathroom.

“Be right out,” he said.

I stepped forward quickly. Quick for an old guy. Took the revolver from him. Socks and underpants falling to the floor.

“Don’t do that to Marie,” I said. Slid the.38 into my waistband. Bent over and picked up the socks and underpants. Back stiff and knees sore.

“She’ll fall apart with me in jail,” said Stoltz.

“She’ll live to be a hundred trying to help you. Leave the bathroom door open, Roger.”

I WAITED until we were in my car to cuff him to the clothes hanger in back. Went back in and explained things to Marie. Made sure the hired man would be there that night in case Marie had a hard time of it.

“Drive past the packinghouse,” said Roger.

“They tore it down thirty years ago.”

“Really.”

“They put a street in and named it Packers Circle.”

Roger pursed his lips. “I never had the…courage to go back there. Drive over, anyway, would you?”

“Sure.”

I parked on Packers Circle. We looked at the stores. Nice young families buying things. Not a trace of what had been there before or what had happened. Maybe that’s good. Let people get on with life.

We sat there for a long time. Didn’t say one word.