Pacific Beat

Chapter 13

Sergeant Philip Kearns’s home was a small upstairs apartment on Newport Island, a tiny piece of land accessible only by a bridge so narrow, it would admit just one car at a time. Around the island stood a forest of masts, bobbing patternlessly in the stiff morning breeze. Each waterfront home had a dock and a yacht of varying size, the vessels tethered to the islet like a litter of pups to a mother.

Jim parked on the boulevard and walked across. A Newport cop car slid by, both officers eyeing Jim with long, hard stares as he crossed the bridge. He wondered whether Virginia’s theory could be true. That was the trouble with paranoia, though: It was contagious. The morning sun gave the harbor a low-gloss finish. Coming off the small bridge, Weir surprised a couple of ducks, which squawked, then waddled huffily into the water, where they paddled away, glancing back at him as perfect ripples advanced from their breasts.

Kearns had been easy enough on the phone. He had invited Weir over at seven, in a tone of voice that suggested neither suspicion nor submissiveness. He answered the door wearing a black silk robe and a pair of Japanese sandals. Kearns was taller than Weir had expected, slender for a cop. His sandy brown hair was receding from a suntanned forehead, and tussled from sleep. Lighter than the hair on Ann’s blouse, Jim thought — but how much? What struck Weirwas his skin: smooth, unwrinkled, unblemished. His handshake was firm. “Getting a late start,” he said.

“Thanks for meeting.”

“Have a seat, I’ll get some coffee.”

Kearns’s apartment was almost all glass, which gave him views past city hall toward Balboa, up Newport Boulevard, of the huddled duplexes on the upper peninsula and the ocean beyond them. The west wall was mirrored to expand the room, which couldn’t have been more than twelve by twelve. Weir looked down a very short hallway that ended at a closed door. The kitchen in which Kearns was now pouring coffee had the small versions of everything — refrigerator, oven and two-burner stove, a microwave and wineglass rack tucked under the cabinets to save space. It looked like ship’s galley. The living room furnishings were masculine: black leather and metal, minimal, expensive. The place smelled of cologne and talc. The ultimate bachelor-on-a-budget pad, thought Weir. Not bad. Through the window behind Kearns, Weir could see a sea gull perched on orange feet atop a yacht mast.

Kearns’s coffee made Virginia’s taste like sludge. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For you, for Ray, most of all for Annie. I knew her pretty well and I liked her more than I knew her.”

Annie, thought Weir. Ray called her that, Mom did, I did. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Kearns reclined comfortably into his leather couch, glanced quickly at Jim, then sipped his coffee. “Let’s get a few things out in the open, okay? There’s talk around the station that Dennison put you up to this, because of Mackie Ruff’s statement about the cop car. He’s using you because you’re unofficial and deniable, and because Ann was your sister. Is that about right?”

Weir nodded. So much for deep cover. “It was more Ray’s doing. The idea was that I could waste my time checking out Ruff’s lead while everybody else does something more constructive.”

Kearns looked at him impassively. If he didn’t buy the version, he was gracious enough to hide it. “Jim, I’ll tell you what I did that night, or any other night. But don’t ask me about the men. I won’t talk about anyone but myself.”

“Agreed.”

The phone rang, a muted chirp. Kearns raised a finger to Jim, then produced a slim receiver from somewhere in the couch and put it to his ear.

Weir gazed out the windows toward Balboa while Kearns purred on quietly with a lot of “yeah, babes” and “love toos.” Kearns looked over the receiver at Jim with a smirk on his unblemished face and an actual twinkle in his eye. “Call me later, then,” he said, and hung up. “Sorry.”

“Sounded important.”

“Well, some more than others. You married?”

“Almost, once.”

“I was. Talk about human sacrifice. The day I walked out of that condo in El Toro and into this place alone — it was like getting out of the big house. There’s nothing wrong with a man living alone, as long as he can get himself taken care of once in a while. I don’t see how Ray and Annie did it.”

Annie. “You pretty tight with them?”

Kearns leaned forward and cupped his coffee in both hands. “Well, it was getting that way. Raymond thinks I’m... how should I say it... wasting myself. We were partners for six months and he kind of took me under his wing. I learned a lot from him. There was an assumption on Ray’s part that he had something I didn’t. I think the idea was to show me that two people could get along and be happy. So he and Ann and I did some things. Ray’s so domestic, and Ann was, too. But it was, well... it was interesting.”

“How so?”

“I think Ann was faking it.” Kearns looked at Weir over his coffee cup. Beneath the high, smooth forehead, his eyes were cool and clear. “Ray adored her, that was obvious. And Ann played along. But I sensed something false about her, something offered for show. I was the juvenile delinquent, remember.”

Jim heard the toilet flush from behind the hallway door, then the sounds of someone moving about. “What was it that didn’t ring true?”

“She looked like an animal in a cage. You could almost see her pacing. Sure, she’d tease Ray when he teased her, she’d squeeze his nose if he pinched her cheek, she’d let him kiss and make up after they bitched at each other for a few weird seconds. But she was always reacting. He was always reaching in for her and she was always backing up. When Annie and I were alone — like if Ray went to the head, or had to make a call — she’d be completely different. With Ray gone, she had slow hungry eyes, not hungry for me, I mean, but hungry for what was going on around her. You could see her unplug from Ray and plug into the world. She relaxed. It was like she was offstage. She’d sneak one of my cigarettes before he got back. They actually had a fight about that one night at Dillman’s when Ray caught her. Two people married for twenty years and they fight about a cigarette. She shocked me once. We were sitting in the Studio Café, the three of us, and Raymond goes back to the car because he forgot his wallet. I’m watching the waitress lean over to lay down a plate on another table. Short skirt, perfect ass. I know Annie’s watching, too. Then she says, ‘Frontward or backward if you had your way, Phil?’ She’s smiling at me like Ann could, real wicked, and real innocent at the same time. I said, ‘Just like you see it.’ And Ann says, ‘She would, too.’ So I asked her why and she says, ‘Because that way you could be anybody in the world.’ Two minutes later, Raymond’s back and we’re talking about the preschool again, or some shit. It was strange.”

The story collided with what Jim believed of his sister, but who can really know, he thought. Poon was the philanderer — untrustworthy, shameless, indiscriminate. Virginia, on the other hand, forsook these things, as avowed. Poon led secret lives. Virginia suffered them. Poon had actually encouraged duplicity in Jim... did he promote it to Ann, too? She was always daddy’s girl. Mother’s daughter, but daddy’s girl. Weir’s next question sounded strange to him. “Do you think Ann had it in her to see someone else?”

“I think she did, and I think she was. I worked the peninsula all of February, half of March. Couple of times, I was cruising past the Whale when she got off. She was heading down Balboa in her car, away from home.”

Where they found her car, thought Weir. “Still in uniform?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Did you ever tail her?”

“Not once. Not my business.”

“Did you tell Ray?”

“Never. That’s definitely not my business.”

“Have you told him since?”

“I haven’t seen him. He’s still in the hospital, isn’t he?”

“He got out yesterday. They made him sleep and eat a lot.”

The phone rang again and Kearns answered it. Chuckles, a whisper that Weir couldn’t make out, then some innuendo about what’s good for the goose being good for the gander. Kearns said noon would be fine and hung up. He looked at Jim, then out the window. “Anyway, I told you I’d talk about myself and here I am telling you about your own sister and your friend. I’ve said enough about that, I think.”

“Did Ray ever seem to think she was seeing someone?”

“Not that he let on to me. Ray was trusting. He was also pretty distracted, with school and all. You can go right to the source on that one.”

“I have,” said Jim. “And he didn’t.”

The door at the end of the small hallway suddenly opened and a woman came from the bedroom, wrapped in a bright green robe. She was slender and barefoot, fortyish, Weir thought, and her auburn hair hung around her face in tangles. She squinted as she came in, and headed for the coffeepot.

“Morning, beautiful,” said Phil. “This is Jim Weir. Jim, Carol Clark.”

The dispatcher, he thought. Cozy. He said good morning. She eyed him sleepily.

“Coffee’s almost gone,” she said.

“Make some more,” said Kearns.

“You need a bigger pot.”

“Get me one for Christmas.”

“Jerk,” she said sleepily, and not without tenderness, her face breaking into a yawn that she covered up with a small, smooth fist.

To Jim’s astonishment, the sound of a flushing toilet issued again from the bedroom, and a moment later another woman came traipsing down the hall and into the living room. She looked half Carol’s age, maybe younger. She was short and pale, with long strawberry blond hair that ended just above the shoulders of a white terry robe that had an Everlast label on the breast. “Bachelorette Number Two,” she mumbled. “Crystal.”

“Hi, Wonderful,” said Kearns, smiling mightily at Weir. “This is Jim.”

She looked at Jim without apparent interest, then walked over and sat down beside him. “Make this guy quit doing this to us. He’s sick and spoiled and there’s never enough coffee for three.” Crystal’s chest was pale and freckled where it disappeared into her robe. She examined a fingernail, then brought it to her mouth. In profile, she was a girl. “Can you do that for me?” she asked Weir, still biting on the nail.

“You don’t exactly look captive.”

“I’m a prisoner of his mind.”

“Door’s open.”

Kearns was smiling still, immensely impressed with himself. “Okay. You’re free, Crystal. You may return to your former life of boredom and neglect in beautiful downtown Barstow. Go on, get outta here.”

She grunted, went into the kitchen, and started grinding more coffee. Carol headed back to the bedroom and shut the door. Crystal stepped outside to a small sun deck and plunked herself down on a chaise while the coffee brewed.

“Remember one thing,” said Kearns. “Every time you see a beautiful woman, there’s a man in her life that’s sick of her. I read that somewhere.”

“Is that what you thought when you met Ann?”

Kearns smiled slightly. “No. One thing I learned real early was that Ray wasn’t anywhere near sick of Ann. Like I said, that’s why they made us a threesome, to show me that two people could be happy with each other.”

“Did she ever come on to you?”

Kearns shook his head and looked out at Crystal on the sun deck. She had her pale little legs stretched out to catch the minimal sun, and the boxing robe pulled up close around her neck to cut the spring chill. “Crystal’s from Barstow, by way of Oklahoma. She tries to get every ray of California sun she can. Sweet kid. No. Annie never came on to me. And since you’re going to ask it next, no, I never came on to her. But I will tell you I appreciated her as a beautiful, mysterious woman, and I think she appreciated me back. We recognized something very important about each other, something that only the people who have it themselves can see.”

“What’s that, Phil?”

Kearns turned thoughtful now, sipped his coffee with a furrowed brow and glanced again out at Crystal. “The capacity to go through with things.”

Jim followed Kearns’s gaze out to the girl. The sea gull on the mast appeared from his angle to be sitting on Crystal’s head.

“The capacity to go through with things, and all the dangers that come with it, especially if someone’s married,” said Kearns.

“And you two recognized it in each other, but it was never acknowledged?”

“It was acknowledged the first time I laid eyes on her. That was our connection. We saw beneath the surfaces, straight to the ulterior. Annie was one big ulterior, waiting to happen. I guess I don’t have to explain to you how ulterior I am.”

Weir heard Carol Clark thumping around in the bedroom. “What was it that kept you and Annie from consummating all this humid mystery?”

“Ray Cruz,” said Kearns. “Pure and simple. No woman is worth destroying a friendship over. Not one. Not even two.”

Weir wondered whether it might have been Ann who kept up that end of the bargain, and Kearns who wanted to challenge it. Still, it was difficult to imagine Kearns taking her — or anyone else — seriously enough to commit murder. “There’s an hour I want to talk to you about, when you were on patrol. Monday night, the night Ann died.”

Kearns looked at Jim, his self-satisfaction turning to interest and concern. “I was working the peninsula.”

“I know that. I also know you were off radio for twenty minutes, between twelve-thirty and twelve-fifty. That’s too long for coffee and too late for dinner.”

Disappointment registered in Kearns’s eyes. “And just enough time to kill Ann?”

“That’s an awful long jump you just made.”

“I make long jumps, Weir, because it saves time. I hit a lull a little after twelve — nothing happened. No calls to answer, no tickets to write, no disturbances to check out. Things usually kick in about twelve-thirty when the first shift of drunks is on its way home.”

“Where were you?”

“I looped down to the Wedge, parked for a few minutes, looked for drinkers on the beach. Then I headed back, checked out the side streets, cruised a place on L Street that’s been hit twice the last month. Nothing cooking.”

“You see any other units?”

“Seeing anything was tough that night. No, no other units. There were three others on my beat, but I didn’t see them.”

Weir considered. “Blodgett says he saw a patrol car out of area that night, coming off the bridge and heading south, toward the Back Bay. Midnight, on the dot.”

“No. I’d have had to be out of area myself to see that. Like I said, I was on the peninsula, all night except the runs I made in to the tank. Two to be exact — a drunk in public and a B and E.”

“You didn’t see Ann that night?”

“No.” Kearns’s gaze lowered to the floor and stayed there for a long beat. Then he looked back out at Crystal. “I’ll miss her.”

Carol came from the bedroom again, dressed in jeans and a light sweater and a pair of low pumps. Her purse was slung over a shoulder. She set down her coffee cup, walked over to Kearns, and kissed the top of his head. “Later, Phil.”

“Bye.”

“See you when I see you. Nice to meet you, Jim.”

Weir nodded and watched her go through the door, appear on the other side of the glass, whack her purse against the legs of dozing Crystal, whose head lifted sleepily, and disappear down the stairs.

“So,” said Kearns. “I hope you’ve gotten what you wanted from me. Now I’ll give something that might help. Consider it a gift to Annie.”

“Shoot.”

“I’ve got days off, right, so I’ve spent a little time on my own down on the Back Bay. Dennison encouraged anybody who wants to work some ‘overtime’ for Ray. No pay involved, by the way — just volunteer. Yesterday I spent the afternoon going back to the houses with a view of Galaxy, past Morning Star, where this guy might have parked. Of course, we’d talked to everybody before — or thought we had — but I kicked up this old lady whose husband didn’t want her to talk. He was the king, you know, she couldn’t say anything he wouldn’t contradict. So I sent him out of the room for a ticket he’d gotten — some story about a parking pass that wasn’t expired — so I could talk to his wife. It turns out she heard a car pull up and park about midnight. It woke her; she had to use the head, so she took a leak and on the way back looked outside. What she sees is a white four-door parked along the curb. She doesn’t know the make or model but she does notice two things. Whoever is driving it doesn’t get out — he just sits there behind the wheel. And two, the car’s got a big dark patch of something on the driver’s side door. Sounded like primer to me, maybe some body work that didn’t get finished. Definitely not a cop car, she said.”

Weir pondered this. To someone who saw it moving, the primer patch could have looked like the city of Newport emblem.

“Now get this, early this morning, patrol found a car registered to Emmett Goins parked down at the end of the peninsula, by the Wedge. It’s a white ’eighty-seven Chevy with a big patch of primer showing on the driver’s door. It’s got a chrome luggage rack on top. His son, Horton, had taken it. Horton’s a serious nut case from Ohio, a big fat prior like what happened to Ann — just arrived here in sunny Southern Cal.”

“No Goins in the car?”

“No Goins. Innelman and Deak were working it, as of three A.M.”

“Can you tell me what they got out of Goins’s apartment?”

Kearns smiled wryly and sat back. “Nobody could figure out how Brian got on to Goins in the first place. Was it you?”

Jim nodded.

“Well, whatever he got from the apartment, he’s sitting on it, so it must be hot. Hot enough for this, anyway.” Kearns tossed Weir the morning Times from the couch. Front page Orange County section ran the headline:

Jim sped through the article, wondering why Dennison hadn’t tipped him. Had Brian tossed the cop theory, or was he blowing smoke to cover it? A snapshot of Horton and Edith ran beside the article, a good-looking, solitary young man standing with his soft, bloodshot-eyed mother.

“Nice work on the car.”

“It’s a start. We’ll hand out fliers of that snapshot this afternoon, down by the Wedge. Chances are, if he ditched the car there, he’s nowhere nearby. But it’s worth a try.”

Jim stood up and looked again at the dozing Crystal. There was something sublime about a sleeping woman.

“So,” said Kearns, “You’ve got a drunk who saw a cop car and a sleepy old lady who saw primer. Who do you pick?”

“I don’t pick,” said Weir. “Not yet.”

“I’m going with the lady.”

“Maybe Mackie Ruff’s recall will be better, now that his brain’s dried out.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“You guys still have him?”

Kearns smiled and nodded. “Rumors of press interest in a ‘secret witness,’ so Brian’s trying to keep Ruff out of circulation for a while. Paris was going nuts. Goins will change all that, I’d guess.”

“I’d guess.” Jim rose to leave, shook Kearns’s hand, and looked once more around the little apartment. “Thanks.”

“Give my best to Ray. He ought to get back to work, try to have a schedule, something like normal.”

“I think you’re right.”

On his way past the sun deck, Weir glanced at Crystal. Her freckled nose was clearly visible, just beneath the line of shadow cast by the rooftop. “See ya, handsome,” she said.

“Hope so, beautiful.” He saw in her — now that Kearns had pointed it out — a definite capacity to go through with things. He wondered what she saw in him. Where did Kearns find these women, anyway?

He walked across the bridge and toward his truck. Carol Clark sat in a sporty red convertible, smoking a cigarette and signaling him over with a slender finger. She started the engine as he approached. “Kneel down here so I don’t have to yell,” she said.

He knelt beside the car, bracing his hands against the body. He could see himself, reflected and disproportional, in her dark glasses.

“You’ve heard the Dispatch tape?”

“That’s right.”

“There’s no pause button on the tape recorder, but I can use the other dispatch station when I want to. The recorder’s only set up on the active one, right? Tuesday morning, I called Phil four times between twelve-thirty and twelve-fifty, on the dead station.” She blew a plume of smoke over Jim’s shoulder.

“I guess I wonder why.”

“You should. Slow night, no action. I buzzed Phil for a little chitchat. Everybody’s in on our... situation, but it’s not the kind of thing you want recorded. Follow?”

“So far.”

“Well, Prince Philip didn’t answer. He wasn’t in the car for twenty minutes. That doesn’t exactly match what he told | you in there. Small apartment, thin walls.”

“Hazard a guess where he was?”

“You hazard it. We’re talking about murder, and men I know.”

“You think Kearns is... uh, capable of going through with something like that?”

“He’s capable of getting women to do things they never even dreamed they’d do. I’m not a bimbo, contrary to what! you might conclude from that embarrassing little situation in there. I’m not sure how he reacts when he doesn’t get his way. Never seen him not get it.” She put the car in gear and inched forward. “Forget all this. I don’t exist.”

“Got ya.”

She looked at him from behind the dark lenses. “You know what the reason is, what the thing behind this is? Boredom. Boredom and narcissism.”

“I guess you’ve found the antidote.”

“You think of a better one, you can call me.”

Capacity to go through with things, thought Weir; Mix it with boredom and narcissism and you get two women and one man in a glass house on the water in Newport Beach Maybe the sun here just burns people dumb after a while Maybe a six-month summer does something to the groin. Maybe people are just bored and in love with themselves and they’re going to spend every drop of what they’ve got right here and now because they can’t spend it in the grave. Doesn’t anyone worry anymore?