The Paradise Prophecy

13

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

He watched the girl get off the bus at the Greyhound station, her doe eyes taking in the world around her with obvious disappointment.

It was not, he imagined, what she had expected to find. The city wasn’t as clean as it looked on network TV-cars choking the boule-wasn’t as clean as it looked on network TV-cars choking the boulevard, trash clogging the gutters, the smog not as thick as it once was, but still smelling faintly of dirt and spit and sulfur.

There were no digitally enhanced blue skies here. And the only palm trees left were now victim to a slow-killing rot.

A homeless woman was huddled on the sidewalk near the bus station exit and the girl gave her wide berth, clutching her knapsack as she moved, looking as if she were afraid the old woman might spring to her feet and block her passage like a troll at the gates of Purgatory.

But the old woman remained still, only her eyes moving as the girl hurried past and made her way up Cahuenga toward Hollywood Boulevard, where surely things would look much better.

This was, after all, the land of dreams. Home to the stars.

But he knew that things would not look better. And as he followed the girl, staying a discreet distance behind her, he could see the change in the way she carried herself as her disappointment deepened. The footsteps slowed, the shoulders slumped, the head swiveled back and forth, hoping to find something-anything-that looked even remotely inviting.

The chicken hut on the corner? The check-cashing store? The urgent care clinic with iron bars on its front window? The tattoo parlor?

There was nothing. And he knew she was suddenly terrified, wondering if she’d made a mistake.

In this day and age she should have known better. But fifteen-year-old girls are not prone to critical thinking, especially when they want desperately to get away from home.

Some things just never change.

He had been watching her for many days now. Had followed her all the way from Lawton, Arizona. She’d gone missing from her home, but he’d found her at the bus depot there, counting the money she’d kept hidden in her dresser drawer, holding it close to her budding chest, eyes darting, hoping no one was paying much attention to her.

But he was.

And all the time he had watched her, from Arizona to California, he had been second-guessing himself, wondering if his instincts were wrong.

They’d certainly been wrong before. Many times, in fact.

There was the exchange student in eastern France. The painter in Hammersmith. The humanitarian in Macedonia. The missionary in northern Thailand . . .

He had searched the globe, year after year, and thought he’d heard her song. But what he’d really heard was his own wishful thinking. Nothing more. And he had begun to wonder if it was all a lie. A cruel deception, perpetrated by a father who no longer cared.

But this one was different.

This one gave him hope.

The kind of hope he had almost forgotten about. The kind of hope he’d felt in the long ago days, when he’d first made the decision to stop the killing, the debauchery, the self-serving narcissism that drove so many of his kind.

Maybe he was crazy, but it seemed that the circumstances were finally right for once. The fourth moon would soon be here, and he could hear the girl’s soul calling out to him, so much stronger than any of the others.

And he knew that she was different. Special.

A gift from an absentee father.

His message to God.

After wandering up Hollywood Boulevard for several long blocks, her knapsack starting to weigh her down, the girl turned into a small coffeehouse on the corner of Gower, the kind of place that looked as if its prices might be right for her miniscule budget.

He waited as she bought a muffin and a cup of tea. She took a seat near the window, looking back the way she came with small-town eyes, full of trepidation and confusion, clouded faintly by tears. He knew it was really sinking in now, and before long the panic would start, and she’d be ripe for the taking by the first “kind soul” who came along.

She had been much safer back in Lawton. Despite her repugnant stepfather, the world around her had been smaller there, more easily controlled. But try to convince a teenager she’s better off where she is and see how far that gets you. Especially when the aforementioned stepfather starts getting friendly and making comments about her changing body. Doing it while Mom is conveniently at work.

And Mom was always at work.

Stepping into the coffeehouse, he moved toward a table in back, careful not to make direct eye contact with her.

Too early for that. He didn’t want to scare her away.

The girl gave him only a cursory glance as he entered-which was just fine with him. She kept her gaze on the street, sipping her tea, nervously nibbling her muffin, probably wondering if she had enough money to find a place to sleep tonight and still have any left over. There was a free shelter less than a block down Gower, but he doubted she knew about it. The only planning she’d done before getting on that bus was to buy a ticket.

And because he wasn’t quite ready to make contact with her, he knew he’d have to find a way to guide her there.

Which, of course, was the difficult part.

One thing he had learned in all these years of “sobriety,” as he called it, was that people had minds of their own, and getting them to do what he’d like them to do without resorting to treachery-and thereby breaking his code-took a lot of ingenuity. But he also found that if you presented them with the opportunity to make the right decision, they often did.

But as he well knew, it wasn’t the decision itself that mattered. It was the intent behind it that counted.

Pulling the plug on a dying loved one because you want to inherit his estate is vastly different from pulling that plug because you want to end his suffering. You’re either a murderer or a humanitarian, but you can’t be both.

And the former will never get you that ticket to heaven, no matter how things may look to the world at large.

She was halfway through her muffin when a young man walked past the coffeehouse window. Twenty-five, slender but muscular, with raggedy brown hair and few days’ worth of stubble on his chin. Hollywood pretty, like so many of them were out here-and a predator, no doubt about it.

He knew this before the guy had even disappeared from view.

A moment later, the pretty boy was back, now looking in the window at the girl, then breaking into a smile, moving around to the door.

As he pulled it open, he caught her gaze and said, “Carrie?”

The girl seemed confused and a little flustered, then the guy was crossing to her table, giving her his best Jack Nicholson grin, but without the mischief or malevolent wit behind it.

“Carrie Whitman, right? You were in my Fundamentals of Scene class last year. We did that improv. The love scene, remember?”

The girl, looking slightly embarrassed, said, “I think you’ve got me mixed up with somebody else.”

“No, no, no,” he told her, then pulled out a chair and sat. “I’ll never forget that kiss you gave me. And you’re just as hot as you always were.”

The girl started to redden. “Seriously, I’m not this Carrie girl, and I’ve never taken an acting class in my life.”

The guy frowned. “You sure you aren’t pulling my chain? Because I swear to God you two could be . . .” He paused, looking at her more closely now. “Yeah, yeah, I guess you’re right. When I think about it, you’re definitely a lot hotter than she ever was.” He got to his feet, pushed the chair in. “Sorry for being such a douche.”

Oh, he was good.

“Don’t even worry about it,” the girl said.

The guy flashed her another smile, then nodded to her and headed out the door. She was already on the hook, her head turning, following him with her gaze as he once again walked past the window.

Then he stopped, turned. Came back inside.

He was looking at her knapsack now. “Did you just get into town?”

The girl was an innocent, but she wasn’t completely naive, and she hesitated before answering. “Yeah. Just a little while ago.”

He held out a hand to shake. “I’m Zack.”

She stared at it a moment, as if weighing a decision, then finally shook it. “Jenna.”

“You looking for a place to stay tonight?”

“Uhh . . .” Another moment of hesitation. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Me and a bunch of my friends are crashing at a place up in Burbank. There’s plenty of room, you wanna join us. It isn’t much, but it’s way better than any of the shitty-ass hotels around here.”

In the middle of all this, a woman wandered into the coffeehouse and ordered an Americano. Zack wasn’t exactly speaking at a conversational level, so her attention was caught before she’d even closed her wallet.

Zack was still in the middle of his pitch, the girl starting to come around, weakening at the prospect of not having to sleep in an alley or a junkie dive, when the woman turned and said, “Bobby, get the fuck out of here before I call the police.”

Her tone was flat, matter-of-fact, no-nonsense.

Zack wheeled around, annoyed by the interruption. But his demeanor changed the moment he realized who she was. Apparently, he and this woman had a history.

Jenna frowned at him. “I thought you said your name was Zack?”

“Middle name,” he said, and of course he was lying. Everyone in Hollywood was trying to reinvent themselves. “And I don’t like it when people call me Bobby.” He shot a look at the woman now.

The woman didn’t back down. “And I don’t like when you prey on girls who are nearly a decade younger than you are. I mean it, Bobby, go now or I really will call the police.”

She pulled out her cell phone to punctuate the threat. Zack looked as if he were about to get all hot and bothered, maybe go postal on her, but after a moment he merely glanced at the two women, muttered the word bitch and slinked out the door.

Jenna looked dismayed. “Who was that guy?”

“Nobody you want to get involved with, dear. He hangs around the shelter sometimes, harassing the girls, and I’m always having to chase him away.”

“Shelter?”

“I run a homeless shelter down the street.” She glanced at Jenna’s knapsack. “We’ll probably be full up tonight, but it’ll be dark soon and if you need a place to stay, I’ll be happy to put a sleeping bag on my office floor.”

“Really?”

“Really. But you’ll have to decide before my Americano comes, because there are a lot of other girls out there who could use that space.”

A moment later the woman’s order was ready, and Jenna hefted her knapsack and went with her out the door.

He considered following them but didn’t think it was necessary. Jenna would be in capable hands tonight, and that was all that mattered. Zack the pretty boy was bound to be a complication-he had a feeling Jenna hadn’t seen the last of him-but he could handle that in due course.

As the two women disappeared from view, he could still hear the siren song of Jenna’s soul. Those high, sweet notes that told him he had finally found the one he’d been looking for for so many years.

What a shame she had to die.