The Last Good Guy

2

I knocked on Nick Moreno’s condo door and waited. This was an Encinitas complex named Las Brisas, the breezes, which at nine o’clock this morning were onshore, damp, and cool. From the ground-floor porch I could see the street where Penelope Rideout had parked for her night-long vigil. I pictured her half dozing, head against the rest and turned to the driver’s-side window. Moreno’s place had that nobody-home feel. I tried the doorbell again, heard the faint chime inside. The door was locked.

I followed a walkway around to the back gate. It opened to a concrete patio and a slope of ivy topped by a white vinyl privacy fence. Potted plants, a wound green garden hose, and a garage door, closed but not locked. I hit the lights, heard the fluorescent tubes buzz, saw the white van and the enlarged papillon regarding me pertly. Stepped up close and saw the van was empty. Stood there for a moment, looking at the tools of Nick Moreno’s trade neatly stacked on a shelf: boxes of dog treats and plastic poop bags and paper towels.

One of the adjacent neighbors, Lydia, hadn’t seen Nick in weeks. The other wasn’t home.

The upstairs tenant was an affable young man named Scott Chan. When I told him my name and business, he said he hadn’t seen Nick lately. When I asked about suspicious activity downstairs, Chan said not really, but the day before, he’d seen a silver Expedition SUV pull into the driveway. A round blue emblem on the driver’s door, but he couldn’t read it — bad angle. Two men got out and went into Nick’s. This was around noon. Just a few minutes later, he heard them come back out. Saw them through his upstairs office window.

Then Chan looked at me, waiting, pursing his lips against something he didn’t want to say.

“Was a girl with them?”

“When they came out of the condo, yes,” he said. “She worked with him sometimes. With Nick. I don’t know her name.”

His description fit Daley Rideout’s, down to her bouncy hair and bright blue eyes. He said she seemed to know the two SUV men. They were all talking. They seemed purposeful. She had rolling luggage and a guitar.

The men were in their late twenties or early thirties. One wore tan pants and a black golf shirt. He was big, looked strong, and had blond hair cut short on the sides and back but longer on top. The other wore the same clothes and a black windbreaker. Neat, clean-cut guys, Chan said. Could have been cops. Or Mormons. Ha.

“Did you go over to Nick’s after they left?” I asked.

“No. No reason to.”

“You didn’t call the police?”

“Why would I do that?” he asked.

“Because you saw a very young teenage girl get into a vehicle with two men you’d never seen before. You watched through your window and you knew it looked wrong, which is why you didn’t mention her until I asked you.”

Chan slumped a little, then caught himself. “Look. I actually thought of calling the police. But the girl and the men looked okay with each other. They could have been family. There was no awkwardness. They got into the front and she got into the rear. Then the driver, the big guy, hopped out and went back into Nick’s condo. A minute later he came back and drove away. Not fast, just regular. What would I tell police? That’s intrusive. I believe in privacy, Mr. Ford.”

“I believe in good judgment, Mr. Chan. Yours was bad.”

“Did something happen?”

“Something always happens.”

I gave Chan a business card with a fifty-dollar bill paper-clipped to the back. I always carry at least one such item in my wallet. It has paid off more than once. “If you see either Nick or the girl, call me. You’d be doing both of them a favor.”

He looked down at the card and cash, shook his head, and sighed.

Back in the garage I saw no signs of an alarm system. Rapped my fist on the door to the house. Waited, called out to Nick, and knocked again. Then picked the lock and went in through a small laundry room — guilty of breaking and entering, Your Honor — but driven by a certain quality of fear that I’ve learned to listen to. Learned as an Expeditionary Force Marine in Fallujah, going door-to-door, stepping into death’s living rooms. Learned again as a sheriff’s deputy on the not-always-friendly streets of San Diego County. And now, here in Encinitas, I stood listening to that special quality of fear, answered by the brash thump of my heart.

And by the muted drone of a TV coming from the floor above.

“Nick! Roland Ford here. I need to talk to you.”

Not a peep. Just the TV above me, a man’s still-faint voice followed by audience laughter. The kitchen was cool and the sinks were full of dishes. Coffeepot a quarter full. From the island kitchen I could see the dining room and the living room with the gas fireplace and the artificial logs. And the stairs leading up. The air conditioner huffed on and the blinds rattled softly.

From the foot of the stairs I called up again. Only the TV answered back. The steps were carpeted, and I took them quietly and two at a time. Lights on in the hallway. A home-office alcove to my left, with a view of another Las Brisas unit just a few yards away. A bathroom door stood open. I stopped at what looked like a guest room. Dog posters. Bookcases filled with paperbacks.

The TV grew louder as I approached the master bedroom. The door was half open and I could hear the sitcom clearly now, That ’70s Show.

“Nick!”

The audience laughed. I pushed the door open and peered inside. A big TV hung on the wall, facing the bed. Nick lay propped against the headboard, facing the screen with eyes open and man bun in place, the remote cradled in his extended right hand. In his left hand leaned a glass tumbler. The bullet had caught him squarely in the forehead, centered just above his eyes. A big-caliber bullet, probably fired from a silenced gun — or half the citizens of densely packed Las Brisas would have heard and reported it. Certainly Daley Rideout and Scott Chan. Just a trickle of blood off his nose because Nick Moreno had died before he could even move. The headboard was a gruesome spectacle. On the TV, youngsters shot hoops and cracked jokes. The smell of blood.

Because a defenseless young man had been murdered, and because I was a licensed private investigator who had introduced myself to neighbors, tried to purchase information from one of them, then illegally entered another’s domicile, I would have to call the police soon.

So I shot pictures of Nick with my phone.

And close-ups of the tattered pit bull — themed address book and the Labrador retriever appointment calendar I found on the office desk. I recorded his last three incoming messages on the landline answering machine. What I really wanted was his cell phone contacts, but his phone was likely in his pocket — it was nowhere else I searched.

I stood in the bedroom doorway again, considering “guaranteed loser” Nick Moreno. Twenty brief years. Someone’s son, and I had to figure they had loved him and held him when he was hurt and fussed over which of his school pictures to order and what to get him for Christmas and if they should really let him have that puppy he badly wanted.

I also considered the other man who happened to be here — one Roland Ford, making a living off the dead.

Here to help a young girl who had taken up with violent men.

Here to satisfy a contract with a paying client.

I can cast my actions as virtues as well as the next guy.

I took out my phone again and put it on camera, then reversed the direction for a selfie. Looked down at my big and scarred and not beautiful face filling the little black screen. Took my picture. Felt that I needed to keep this moment. Ford, at another crossroads he hadn’t known was there.

Then I went outside, locked my cell phone in the big toolbox bolted to the bed of my truck.

Walked back into Nick Moreno’s home and used his landline to call Detective Sergeant Darrel Walker at the San Diego Sheriff’s North Coast Station, which covers Encinitas. I broke off some toilet paper and wiped off the telephone handset. Put the paper in my coat pocket. Darrel and I had worked together once and almost gotten along.

Twenty minutes later I answered Nick Moreno’s doorbell and looked into Darrel’s unhappy face. Two uniforms and a crime-scene investigator with a rolling suitcase flanked him, all giving me their best grave expressions.

“Every time I see you something bad has happened,” said Darrel Walker.

“Here we go again.”

Darrel shook his head but not my hand, then stepped inside.

I walked him upstairs. The uniforms jangled heavily behind us and the CSI carried his suitcase rather than bump the cargo up the steps.

While they stood in the doorway of Nick Moreno’s bedroom I stepped into the office alcove and looked out the window at the sunny September morning. Four road bikers sped by on the street below, clustered tightly, knees high and their chests nearly prone to the bike frames. A pickup truck slowly followed, a young couple in front and two surfboards resting on blankets on the tailgate. A red SUV came from the other direction, towing kayaks. I was once a cyclist, a surfer, and a kayaker. Then a college kid, a Marine, a boxer, and a sheriff’s deputy. After getting knocked out in my pro boxing debut, I had a long talk with myself and took up ballroom dancing. I know. But even being large and heavy, I still feel light on the dance floor. Got third place in a waltz competition once, a nice little gold-finish trophy with a trim little dude and a woman in a lilting gown. There are few feelings as satisfying as another’s body working in tandem with your own. The rhythm and trust. The aspirations to grace.

“Ford?” asked Darrel Walker. “Talk to me while these people do their jobs.”

We sat in the small condo dining room. Darrel is bigger than I am, so the room felt even smaller. He records everything. I walked him through my morning and the new client with a missing sister who was mixed up with the man upstairs. Described what Scott Chan had seen, my concern for Daley Rideout, the suspicious arrival and departure of the men. Said that I’d found the garage door leading into the house open. And had heard the TV upstairs. I told him what I could, given that I had client privacy to respect and a job to do.

He asked me if I’d taken pictures and I told him no, I’d left my cell phone in the truck.

“So you called me how?” he asked.

“The landline upstairs.”

“Convenient.”

“Very.”

“What else didn’t you take besides pictures?”

“Nothing. I didn’t touch anything but the phone and the garage doorknob. Even used TP to clean them up.”

“You know I can arrest you.”

“Except the girl took off with two men,” I said. “After one of them put a bullet in that young man’s head. Cut me loose to look for this girl, Darrel. You know what the minutes can mean. Everything I find I’ll bring to you.”

Dark eyes in a dark face, calculating. “I’ll talk to the girl’s sister and Oceanside PD. Probably get myself into a turf war. Maybe you should get out of here before I change my mind.”

Climbing into my truck, I pictured Daley Rideout leaving with two men. I pictured Nick upstairs in his bed. I pictured Penelope’s judging blue eyes. I turned on my phone, hit contacts for her number, then changed my mind.