Nine

6

Manhattan Beach, California

Monday, May 19, 2:25 A.M.

The night air was warm, heated up by desert winds, so Alex rolled the windows down on the Plymouth as he made the trip from Lakewood to Manhattan Beach. The fourteen-mile journey would have been a quick trip up the San Diego Freeway at this time of night, but Caltrans had closed off most of the lanes for repairs, so he took Lakewood Boulevard south to the Long Beach traffic circle, and from there took Pacific Coast Highway. Despite its name, at this point the highway cut inland most of the way, and wasn’t an especially scenic drive. It got him where he wanted to go.

He lived in a small two-bedroom home that was one of a legion of similar World War II-era stucco boxes that had once helped to meet the demand for housing for aircraft factory workers. He never put much work into the place, always thought of it as temporary housing. In another two years, he’d have put his twenty in with the department, and he’d leave the L.A. area for good. That was the plan. Retire young and away from L.A. So far, that was all there was to the plan. He spent almost every day of his life studying the problems of people whose futures had come to an end in L.A. County-they kept him too busy to make elaborate plans for his own future, but he knew he didn’t want to be buried anywhere near them.

As he pulled into the driveway, he saw lights on. His uncle, John O’Brien, must still be awake. He wondered if John was having a rough night.

John was staying with Alex for a few weeks while he recovered from knee surgery-a classic cop ailment, brought on by years of stepping in and out of patrol cars. He was able to move around the house now but was forbidden to drive. Alex was glad he had talked John into recuperating at his place-it made him feel as if he had paid back a small portion of a large debt. Alex believed he owed more to John O’Brien than to any man on earth.

John was his mother’s younger brother. Alex was eight years old and Miles, his older brother, was ten when they first met John. John had joined the army in 1966, just after college, and because he wasn’t fond of his wealthy brother-in-law, he didn’t see much of his sister after her marriage. He served most of his time in the military with Special Forces, mostly on an A team working with the Montagnard in the central highlands of Vietnam. He returned to the States in 1972 with the rank of captain, a Purple Heart, and a Bronze Star. (Alex learned of the medals a year later, in an unauthorized search of a foot-locker-that had earned him the only whipping he had ever received from his uncle.) John stopped by for what was supposed to be a brief visit to his sister in California, and for reasons Alex was unaware of then, decided to leave the military and stay in the Los Angeles area.

Although he had received more lucrative offers, when John left the military he joined the sheriff’s department. Over the next three decades, he worked mostly in LASD field operations, and as part of the department’s specialized teams for hostage rescue and other emergency operations. Except for periods of time as a tactical operations and weapons trainer, he passed up any promotion that would have taken him away from working on the streets, or teaching those who did.

As an adult, Alex came to realize that John’s decision to live near his sister’s family had probably been the result of the soldier’s taking the measure of his brother-in-law. He was also undoubtedly able to see that his sister was unhappy and that her troubles weren’t just a matter of typical marital discord.

Alex’s father was a handsome, athletic man, capable of great charm, who had never held a job or felt the need to get one. If asked what he did for a living, he would have said he was an investor. Managing his substantial inheritance did take up some of his time. Spending it took up more.

While Alex’s grandmother was alive, she kept her volatile son somewhat in check. Despite occasional rebellion (most notably, eloping with Alex’s mother), he wanted to please the old woman, and lived for those rare moments when he did. When she died, he gradually began to enjoy the lack of restraint.

He wanted the best in life, not because he enjoyed the luxuries for which he paid so dearly, but because he was competitive. If his friends owned an Italian villa, he had to have a larger one, in a better location. If they threw a lavish party on a yacht, he had to host a more extravagant one on a bigger yacht. The Brandon millions, wealth that had been in the family for five generations, dwindled. All so that an insecure man would be admired by friends who were, if not wishing him ill, hoping to best him.

By the time John came to California, Alex had already learned when to steer clear of his increasingly moody father. At times exuberant and playful, his father could just as easily fall into despair. The affable man who saw him off to school in the morning might become the angry one by the time he returned home.

As one risky venture after another failed to bring the change of luck his father believed was bound to come his way, his parents began to argue. The Brandons were forced to sell their Malibu home when Alex was twelve. Alex remembered his mother protesting-uselessly-that a twenty-room house in Bel Air was more than was needed.

Visits from John were the only relief in the growing tension at home. John spent time with both nephews, but Alex was more eager to join him than Miles. Miles didn’t care for the discomforts of camping, fishing, or hiking, while Alex would have been happy to live in the woods. When John took his nephews to basketball, football, hockey, and baseball games, Miles didn’t want to sit in less than the best season ticket holder’s box seats-possible, because their father’s unused tickets were often available to them-but Alex was equally pleased to sit next to John on a hard bleacher in the nosebleed section.

Sometimes, they met other sheriff’s deputies, and Alex liked that, too-their teasing, rough humor, the camaraderie that seemed so much more genuine than his parents’ friendships. Once, at home, Miles referred to the officers as boorish. John hadn’t been there to hear it, but Alex noticed that shortly after that, Miles never happened to be invited on the days they went to those gatherings. Miles started referring to John’s home in Long Beach as “Uncle John’s little place” and seldom ended up going with them there, either.

Alex didn’t care who was with them or where they went. What mattered was a chance to be with John, who, in contrast to his father, was calm and steady. Alex felt safe with him.

Early one evening, Alex returned to the house in Bel Air after a day of hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains with John. Only a few lights were on, and as always, John insisted on making sure an adult was home before leaving him. Alex explained that his mother and Miles were at the symphony, that his father was probably upstairs. “Besides, I’m fourteen,” Alex said. “I’m not some little kid. I can be home by myself.”

“I’ll be waiting right here while you get your dad,” John replied.

“It’s a big house. Twenty rooms.” He blushed the moment he said it.

“Much bigger than my little place?” John said with a smile. “Better get started, then.”

Embarrassed to be caught acting snobby like Miles, and chafing at John’s refusal to acknowledge his advanced age, Alex stomped upstairs, impatiently calling for his father, throwing open doors and snapping on the lights of those darkened rooms-while John looked on serenely from the foyer below.

Later, John said that Alex had fallen utterly silent, that it was the way Alex reeled back from the study doorway, his stumbling gait and his wide-eyed, white-faced look of shock that made John run upstairs toward him. Alex found it hard to believe; in his mind, he could clearly hear the piercing sound of his own scream, just as he could clearly recall the sight of his father’s body, the shotgun, the spatter on the wall-the damage to the face and skull that had brought one man mercy and left none for his son.

The last of his father’s debts were paid with the sale of their home and its furnishings.

John took them in. From Bel Air, they moved to his small three-bedroom home in Long Beach. For the first time in their lives, Miles and Alex shared a room. For the first time in their lives, they attended public schools. Miles, who was then sixteen, resented these changes more than Alex did, but both did well in school. Their mother accepted it all with calm grace, taking a job as a receptionist, focusing her life on the needs of her sons. She died when Alex was twenty, but she had, he thought, been happier during those few years in Long Beach than at any earlier time he could remember.

Miles won a scholarship to USC, but John covered the many expenses the scholarship did not. While Alex paid his own tuition to Cal State Long Beach, John also helped him in innumerable ways. Although he had never received any pressure from John to work in law enforcement, it was his admiration for his uncle that led Alex to join the sheriff’s department.

Alex thought it was likely that John was being kept awake by curiosity rather than pain-he had probably caught the story about Adrianos on the news, and was awaiting details. As he approached the porch, the front door opened, and John limped out, a mug of coffee in his hand.

“Damn it, John, you’re supposed to be staying off your feet,” he said in a low voice, trying not to wake his neighbors. “And what are you doing drinking coffee at this time of night?”

John pulled the door closed and said, “If I want to hear an old woman bitch at me, I’ll marry that widow across the street who keeps hitting on me. And this coffee’s not for me, it’s for you.” He held the mug toward Alex.

He took it but said, “If she’s been hitting on you, I guess I’ll offer to drive her to the eye doctor. But it will have to wait until morning, because I’m whipped. So I’m not staying up all night shooting the breeze with you, or having any coffee, so-”

“Yes, you are. You have a little drive ahead of you.”

Alex stared at him.

“Some friends of ours were by a little while ago.”

“What friends?” Alex asked warily.

“Kell and O’Neill. From the Malibu Station.”

Alex felt a chill of apprehension and something else he couldn’t quite name, a hollowness in his gut. Uniforms coming to the house from Malibu. His brother Miles lived in Malibu. But John wouldn’t be offering him coffee if Miles or any member of his family was injured or dead.

He saw that John was watching him closely, and silently cursed.

“Friends of yours, then,” he said aloud. “What brought a couple of uniforms all the way down here from Malibu in the middle of the night?”

“They were bringing my grandnephew to me.”

“Chase?”

“I’m surprised you remember his name.”

Alex frowned. “You talk about him often enough. What the hell is he doing here?”

“Waiting for a ride home.”

He looked around in frustration, as if hoping to find someone who would talk sense. It occurred to him that he still hadn’t made it past his own front door. “Let’s discuss this inside.”

“No, the kid’s asleep, and I don’t want to have him overhear nasty remarks from his loving uncle-shit like ‘What the hell is he doing here?’”

“Forget I asked. I don’t care why he’s here. I just want to get some sleep. This is another attempt on your part to get me to talk to Miles, and it won’t work. So call my less than beloved brother and tell him to come and get his kid.”

“Miles is out of town.”

“According to you, Miles is always out of town.”

John nodded. “That’s a big part of the problem. Probably why his kid is getting picked up for taking little joyrides in other people’s vehicles.”

“Christ-he’s here in lieu of being arrested? What next? And I still don’t see why this should be my problem.”

“Maybe that’s the attitude I should have taken when you were about his age.”

Alex looked away. He thought of John taking in their damaged family under his roof. John was six years younger then than Alex was now. How had he managed it? Even before that, he’d done what he could for his family, left a promising military career to be a presence in the lives of nephews who were strangers to him.

“If I shamed you by that remark,” John said, “then I’m making progress.”

“John…you know why this is different.”

“Because I wasn’t cuckolded by my brother?”

Alex didn’t reply, but John dropped his gaze.

“Well, shit,” John said. “Now I’m ashamed.”

“Don’t be. Look, I’ve been called all kinds of things, heard all kinds of words attached to what happened between me and Clarissa and Miles, and it all lost the power to bother me a long time ago.”

John shook his head. “Like hell.”

Alex laughed softly. “You see me pining away?”

“I’m not saying you don’t have women in your life-that’s always been a little too easy for you. No, don’t get fired up-I’m not saying you’re unkind to any of them. But for all that, you haven’t exactly rushed back to the altar.”

“How many alimony checks are you paying a month?”

“Two-as you well know-and we are not talking about me.”

“Okay, so I’m married to the job. Here I am, coming home after two o’clock in the morning-and that’s not the worst of it by any means. I don’t have to tell you what the job does to relationships.”

“Don’t try to take the easy way out with me, Alex. What happened with Miles and Clarissa-” He paused, and Alex could hear his frustration when he said, “You know what really bothers me? You and I talk about everything under the sun, boy-except that.”

“You were there, John,” Alex said, his voice still low. “You were there the night I found my brother and my wife going at it on my living room floor. Did I need to talk to you about it? Was there some part of that you failed to understand? It was all perfectly clear to me.”

“Don’t be a wiseass.”

A silence stretched between them, then Alex said, “Look, Clarissa and Miles made their choices years ago. I didn’t try to stop her leaving me, and I didn’t try to stop him from marrying her afterward. I’ve never interfered with them in any way.”

“Alex-”

“I married her before I was old enough to legally buy a beer, John. Didn’t last two years. This isn’t a matter of heartbreak-it’s a matter of not wanting to have anything to do with people I can’t trust. The only thing I’ve asked is that they stay the hell away from me. Now you tell me you want me to play taxi driver-come to think of it, they’ve got enough bucks to buy a cab company, so maybe you should call Clarissa and suggest that to her.”

“You call her and suggest it. Be an asshole. Make her congratulate herself on her choices.”

“Oh no. You’re the one who’ll make contact. Since Chase is here instead of jail only because he dropped your name-what the hell are you laughing about?”

“Your name,” John said, still grinning.

“What?”

“He had a phony driver’s license on him and gave them a false last name but told them he was Detective Alex Brandon’s nephew. Think about it, Alex. If they had called my house, they would have heard an answering machine.”

“He dropped my name? Jesus, what nerve this kid must have!”

“You ought to meet him and find out for yourself.”

Alex shook his head, then took a sip of coffee.

“All that bullshit that happened with you and Miles and Clarissa,” John said, “none of that was Chase’s fault.”

Alex frowned. He kept drinking the coffee.

“You agree with me?”

“I’m not blaming him.”

“So you’ll give him a ride home?”

“I’m loading up on caffeine, aren’t I?”

“So you think you might want to try to develop some kind of relationship with your only nephew?”

“No, you old geezer, I don’t. But I finally realized that you were going to sit out here blowing more hot air than the damned Santa Ana, and if I have any hope of getting even an hour’s sleep, I’d better take Miles’s juvenile delinquent home. So wake the little bastard up and get his criminal ass out here before I change my mind.”

John laughed. “Caught on, did you?” he said and hobbled back inside.

Fifteen minutes later, a sleep-tousled but wary young man came out of the house. He was tall and thin, blond and blue-eyed-the “Brandon blue” as John called it-and had his father’s good looks. Alex had seen photographs of Chase before now-John made sure of that. But beholding the flesh-and-blood version of Miles’s son was another matter altogether. For starters, he looked a lot like Miles did at his age, and Alex found himself thinking of those difficult years, of how hard Miles had taken their father’s death, how afraid he had been. “What’s going to happen to us?” he had asked again and again.

And now, at fifteen, his son Chase was scared, too.

The thought struck Alex suddenly, as he watched the boy approach, and he wondered what the hell this kid had to be afraid of. Chase’s eyes looked so much like Miles’s at nearly that age, held that same uncertainty-it was as if all Miles’s DNA had passed his fear along with all his other traits.

But Miles had lost that old fear before he turned eighteen. Alex didn’t much like what had replaced it-a level of ambition that would have been admirable if it hadn’t been so damned ruthless. Was that hidden somewhere in this kid, too?

Alex couldn’t see much of Clarissa in Chase’s features, and he was grateful for that.

Chase took one look at Alex, then nervously glanced back at John. John hobbled forward and put a hand on Chase’s shoulder. “Alex, allow me to present your nephew, Chase.”

Like they were at a damned cotillion, Alex thought.

Chase put out a hand.

Alex, not even bothering to look at what he knew would be a commanding stare from John, shook hands with the boy.

Chase glanced down at the rough and abraded hand that grasped his own. Not his father’s smooth and manicured paw, Alex thought. The boy said nothing.

“You two better get going,” John said, not hiding his pleasure. “Chase, your uncle Alex has had a long night already, so behave yourself.”

“Yes, sir,” Chase said. He paused and added, “Thank you, Uncle John.”

Nothing rebellious.

“You’re welcome. You call me anytime you need help.”

“Yes, sir.” He got into the car.

Alex handed the empty mug back to John and said, “What’d you tell him that’s got him so scared of me?”

“What makes you think you’re the center of the universe? He’s not scared of you.”

“Then what?”

“Not your problem, Alex, remember?”

“You’re an evil old man,” Alex said, and got into the car.

Chase was studying the interior of the Taurus with the look of someone who finds himself in a cheap foreign hotel bathroom, unsure of how to operate the toilet. Alex figured the department-issued sedan was probably the least expensive vehicle the kid had ever been in. If he had any derisive comments in mind, though, Chase didn’t say them aloud.

They didn’t, in fact, say a word to each other until Alex hit traffic. At three in the morning, when the worst thing about traffic should have been dodging the occasional drunk, he had come across another Caltrans repair crew.

“Shit,” he said. Why did this kid have to pick this, of all nights, to show up on his doorstep?

“Sorry,” Chase said.

“Not your fault,” Alex said, in spite of what he had just been thinking.

“Can’t you-you know, like, put on a siren or something?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

They were stopped near a lamppost a moment later. Chase, looking at Alex’s hands on the wheel, said with no little awe, “Were you in a fight?”

Alex saw what the boy saw in the yellowish lamplight. Skinned and swollen knuckles, broken nails, abrasions here and there. “No. I went climbing on Sunday.”

For a moment, Alex was sure that Chase would pursue the topic, but they moved again into darkness, and he fell silent. Alex saw the Sepulveda off-ramp and took it.

“Uh-Uncle Alex?”

Uncle Alex. It sounded strange to hear it.

“You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?” Chase asked anxiously.

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Well, anyway, this isn’t the way to my house.”

“You still live off a little private road in Rameriz Canyon?”

“Yeah.”

“I grew up in that house. I know how to get there.”

“You grew up in our house?”

“Your dad didn’t tell you that?”

“No, but he doesn’t talk to me much about…”

“About me?”

“No.”

They rode in silence for a few more minutes, then Alex said, “We lived there until I was twelve. Your grandfather lost a lot of money, and we moved to another house, in Bel Air. Your dad tell you about that?”

“Is that where my grandfather killed himself?”

Alex saw it as clearly as if he had just stepped through the door-the room, the body, the unholy mess of it. “Yes,” he said.

“My dad said you were the one who found him-Grandfather Brandon, I mean.”

“Yes. And after that we went to live with John,” he quickly added, heading off further inquiry about suicide by shotgun.

Chase seemed to pick up on his discomfort, though, and said, “So you lived in our house? That’s so crazy. What room was your room?”

Alex described it.

“No way!” Chase said, laughing. “That’s my room!”

Alex was a little surprised by this. He would have suspected that Miles would have given his own former room to his heir. But he only said, “What do you know.”

And he began to wonder what the kid did know.

He considered his options, made a decision, and turned onto Sunset and headed west. He ignored the voice of reason, the one that told him there were shorter routes to the Coast Highway. He ignored some other impulse that said there were longer ones.

“Your dad ever tell you why…why we aren’t close?”

Chase shrugged. “He said you just didn’t get along so well now. That sometimes that happens.”

“Yeah, sometimes it does.”

“Well, isn’t that kind of stupid? Like, I mean, I never had a brother-but, you know, if I had one, I don’t think I’d act like you guys do.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t.”

Chase heard the rebuke in it and stayed silent.

The road began to wind, curving its way toward Pacific Palisades. The sky was darker here; the homes larger and farther apart. Concentration on the road was not distraction enough, though, and Alex found himself not liking the silence.

“What school are you in?”

“School’s out for the summer,” Chase said. Alex heard a return of anxiousness in his voice.

“When it’s not out for the summer, where do you go?”

He took so long to answer, Alex thought he wasn’t going to reply. “My dad says they’re going to send me to Sedgewick.”

“Sedgewick!”

“You know it?”

Every member of the sheriff’s department who had ever worked in the Malibu area knew about Sedgewick-the brats of billionaires, the Hollywood hell-born. “Aren’t most of the kids who end up there kind of troubled?”

Chase laughed. “Yeah, troubled. That’s one way to say it. It’s where fucked-up rich kids go to fuck each other up even more.”

Alex wasn’t so sure he was wrong, but he said, “You talk that way around Uncle John?”

Chase looked away from him. “No, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“One extreme or the other, I see.”

Chase didn’t answer.

“I take it you’d rather not go to Sedgewick.”

“Hell-heck, no. I hate the kids who go there. They’re meaner than-they’re really mean.”

“What about your mom?” he made himself ask. “Does she want you to go there?”

“That-”

Whatever word it was going to be, he bit it off. “I take that to be a yes,” Alex said.

“It was her idea. She knows the owner of the school. Really well.”

Alex let it pass. The last thing he could afford to do was to get into some conversation with this kid about his mother’s virtue. He made the turn onto Pacific Coast Highway, heading north. “You tell John about this plan to send you to Sedgewick?”

“No. I don’t want him to be-you know, ashamed of me.”

“So you steal cars?”

Chase went back to brooding in silence.

“Talk to John about it. He has more influence with your father than I do.”

As they came nearer to the house, Alex felt a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. He hadn’t seen the place in years-from the day he heard that Miles had bought their childhood home, he had avoided this road. Chase gave him the code for the new security gate. He punched it into the keypad, and the gate swung open. At the end of the long private drive, the mansion loomed before him, many of the lights on. He felt some sense of recognition, but not of homecoming. Miles had changed it.

The front door opened, and a woman peered out.

“Looks as if your mother waited up for you,” Alex said.

Chase wasn’t looking at her, though.

“Uncle Alex? Thanks. I’m-I’m almost glad I got in trouble. I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time.”

Stay safe or leap into the abyss? He leapt. After all, the kid had jumped first. “I’m glad I met you, too, Chase. But next time, just call. It will be easier on all of us.”

“I don’t have your number.”

Alex pulled out a card and gave it to him. “Pager number’s on there, too.”

Chase quickly tucked it away, now watching his mother coming down the steps.

One leap was enough for an evening, though. “Do me a favor, Chase,” Alex said, as the moonlight caught Clarissa’s features. “Don’t force me to make small talk with your mom.”

“Sure.” He quickly got out of the car and waved.

Alex waved back and turned the car around.

He looked in the rearview mirror and saw Clarissa staring after the car.

Miles had changed her, too, Alex thought. Time and Miles.

Just not enough.