Time Bomb

24

Ten minutes had stretched to more than an hour. When I got up to leave, Burden was so subdued he looked drowsy, and the hand that I shook was wet and limp. I left him at his desk and walked to the elevator.

Outside, the air had stayed warm, and though it reeked of exhaust, I was happy to draw it into my lungs. Happy to get away from the hatred and rage that had filled his office like swamp gas.

I thought I understood, now, why Mahlon Burden had been so eager for me to speak with his son. Howard had shut him out; the two of them had no communication. But if Howard talked to me, I could pass along what I learned to the old man.

Shrink as modem.

That’s my main talent… I do know how to put things together.

And Howard had talked; I’d learned a lot more than I’d expected. But nothing I was going to report to Burden.

I reviewed it as I drove: Holly had deteriorated psychologically shortly after Ike Novato’s death. Handled the rifle she’d ultimately taken to the storage shed…

Wanna see, wanna say. Wanna see or say too.

Or was it two?

See two what?

Probably just gibberish, not worth interpreting.

What relationship, if any, was there to Novato’s death? Gruenberg’s disappearance?

I began to doubt if I’d ever really understand what had led Holly to that shed.

Nothing like that feeling of competence…

As I turned back onto the Glen, I was determined to put all of it out of my mind. Think good thoughts. Think about Linda. About kissing her.

I got home at seven-forty. She arrived an hour later, wearing a pink dress and sandals, her hair loose and sun-gold.

The first kiss was long and deep and I felt as if I was giving myself over to it completely. But when it ended she said, “You feel tense. Everything okay?”

“Just a little tired. And hungry. Still up for Mexican?”

“You bet. My treat.”

“Not necessary.”

“Don’t worry.” She rubbed my shoulder. “When we do Spago, you’ll pay.”

Just as we made it to the door, the phone rang.

She said, “Go ahead.”

I took it in the living room.

“Alex? It’s me.” Robin’s voice.

“Oh. Hi.”

“Hi. You all right?”

“Sure. Fine. How about you?”

“Fine. I’m just waiting for some glue to set, thought I’d call and touch base.”

“I appreciate that. How’re you?”

“Great. Real busy.”

“As usual.”

“As usual.”

Linda had taken out her compact and was looking in the mirror.

Robin said, “So.”

“So.”

Linda looked up. I smiled at her and she smiled back.

“Alex, is this a… bad time?”

“No. I was just on my way out.”

“Anywhere special?”

“Dinner.”

“Hey,” she said, “feel like picking up a pizza and dropping by? For old times’ sake?”

“That would be… difficult.”

“Oh,” she said. “Going out going out.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh. Sorry. I’ll let you go. ’Bye.”

I said, “Wait. Is everything really okay with you?”

“Great. Really. And there’s someone ’round these quarters too. Nothing cosmic at this point, but the indicators are good.”

“I’m glad.”

“Okay,” she said. “I just wanted to touch base. Glad you’re okay. Be well.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“You, too.”

“’Bye.”

“’Bye.”

Linda said nothing as we walked out to the car. I drove to Sunset, cruised past the 405 Freeway on-ramp, listening to Miles Davis. A few moments later, she turned down the radio and said, “Her?”

I nodded.

“You didn’t have to rush things for my benefit.”

“No sense in dragging it out.”

“Okay.”

I said, “It’s over, but we’re still dealing with some of the… friendship residue.”

“Sure. Makes sense.” A moment later: “She’s beautiful.”

“What do you mean?”

“I found a picture of her. This morning, in your library. Face down on one of the bookshelves.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t be mad,” she said, “I wasn’t snooping.”

“I’m not mad.”

“What happened is, I woke up early, thought I’d get something to read, and found it while I was looking through your books- at least I assume it’s her. Long curly hair, kind of rusty-colored? Really good figure? Beautiful wide dark eyes? The two of you standing in front of some kind of lake?”

The lagoon at U.C. Santa Cruz. I remembered the trip- the motel we’d stayed at. Rumpled sheets. Walks in the mountains…

“It’s an old picture,” I said. “I didn’t know I still had it.”

“Nothing wrong if you had kept it on purpose.”

“I’m not one for souvenirs.”

“I am,” she said. “I’ve still got pictures of Mondo in one of my scrapbooks. Before everything went bad. What does that say about me- psychologically?”

“Uh-uh.” I shook my head. “Off duty. No out-of-the-office interpretations.”

“You don’t have a proper office.”

“Need I say more?”

She smiled. “Anyway, she is beautiful.”

“She is. And it’s over.”

“You said that already.”

“Got in the habit of saying it,” I said. “Trying to convince myself. It eventually worked.”

“Would you hate me if I asked how and why?”

“How is, she went on a trial separation that stretched to something permanent. I fought it, tried to persuade her to come back. By the time she’d changed her mind, I’d changed mine. Why is, she felt I was smothering her. Overpowering her. She’d grown up with an overpowering father, needed to stretch her wings, try things out by herself, I’m not trying to make it sound corny or clichéd. There was validity to it.”

“And now she wants you back.”

“No. Like I said, it’s just the friendship residue.”

Linda didn’t answer.

We drove for a while.

“Smothering,” she said. “I don’t see you that way at all.”

“I’m not the same guy I was a year ago. The whole thing made me take a good look at myself.”

“Not that I’d like that myself,” she said. “Being smothered.”

“Somehow, I don’t see you as smotherable.”

“Oh?”

“You fought for your stripes a long time ago, Linda. No one’s going to take them away from you.”

“Think I’m pretty tough, do you?”

“In a good way. I think you can handle yourself.”

She put her hand on the back of my neck.

“Ooh, even tighter. Sorry for making you talk about it. What a Nosy Nancy I am.”

“Nosy Nancy?”

“It’s a regionalism.”

“From what region?”

“My apartment. There- I got you to smile. But this neck- it’s like hardwood.” She moved closer, began kneading. I felt her warmth and her strength, coming from those soft hands, the ones I’d thought passive when I first met her.

She said, “How’s that?”

“Fantastic. I’d trade dinner for about an hour of it.”

“Tell you what,” she said. “First we pig out on Mexican food, then we return to either your place or mine, I give you a real Texas massage, and then you can smother me. You just forget about all the ugliness and the complications and you smother me to your little heart’s content.”

It ended up being my place. We were in bed when the phone rang. Lying naked in the darkness, listening to Gershwin’s own rendition of Rhapsody in Blue, holding hands.

I said, “Jesus, what time is it?”

“Twenty after eleven.”

I picked up the receiver.

Milo said, “Hi.”

“What’s up?”

“From the nuance of irritation in your voice, might I infer that this is a bad time?”

I said, “You just keep getting better and better at the old detecting game.”

“Someone with you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Blondie, I hope?”

“None of your-”

“Good, it’s her I want to talk to. Put her on.”

Puzzled, I handed the receiver to Linda. “It’s Milo. For you.”

She said, “For me?” and took it. “Hello, Detective Sturgis, what is it?… Oh. You’re sure?… That’s great. How did you… Oh. That was lucky… You think so? Okay. Sounds interesting… I guess. If you really think so… Okay, I’ll be there. Thanks.”

She reached across me and hung up the phone. Her breasts grazed my lips. Reflexively, I nibbled. She pulled away and said, “Want to go for a ride?”

A street named Fiesta Drive. No fog tonight. In the moonlight, the magnolias looked like paper cutout trees.

The house was tidy-looking, no different from any of the others on the block. An Oldsmobile Cutlass was parked in the driveway; behind it, the low, black cigar of a Firebird Trans Am. On the Firebird’s rear bumper was a sticker with the call letters of a heavy-metal radio station and another that said LIFE IS A BEACH.

The front door smelled of fresh paint. The bell chimed out the first seven notes of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” A worried looking, heavyset woman in her fifties opened the door on the fifth note. She had on moss-green slacks and a white blouse and was barefoot. Her round face was pale under a crown of baby-blue hair rollers. Her jawline had lost the battle with gravity.

Linda said, “I’m Dr. Overstreet.”

The woman trembled and said, “I’m… They’re… Won’t you come in. Please.”

We stepped into a living room identical in size and trim and layout to the one in the Burden house. This one was painted buttercup-yellow with contrasting white moldings and furnished with a skirted floral chintz sofa and matching chairs, a brown corduroy recliner, golden-maple end tables, and shiny white ceramic lamps. Prints of plein-air landscapes and still lifes favoring fruit and fish hung on the walls, along with a bronze Zodiac wheel and an old Christmas wreath. The fireplace had been bricked up and painted white. A model schooner fashioned of rough-edged copper sheeting and brass wire sat on the hearth.

A dark-complected man with sharp features sat on the recliner, but he wasn’t relaxed. He had thinning black hair, whitening at the temples, a drawn lantern-jawed face that sagged- orienting downward as surely as a dowsing rod. He wore a T-shirt and gray slacks under a plaid Pendleton robe, terry-cloth slippers on white, blue-veined feet. His arms rested on the sides of the recliner, the hands clenching and unclenching.

Milo stood across from him, to the left of the sofa. A boy of around sixteen or seventeen sat right below him. The boy was big, in a soft, bulky way, with thick, formless white arms extending from the rolled sleeves of a pea-green patch-pocketed T-shirt. Around his pudgy wrists were nailhead-studded leather bands. His black jeans were tucked into chain-heeled Wellington boots. A massive stainless-steel death’s-head ring dominated his left hand. His right hand shielded his face. What little I could see of his countenance was puffy, not yet fully formed, under dark hair cut close to the scalp. Fuzzy approximations of sideburns ran down cheeks speckled with pimples, and dipped an inch below his earlobes. He didn’t look up at our entrance, just continued to do what he’d obviously been doing for a while: crying.

Milo said, “Evening, Dr. Overstreet and Dr. Delaware. These are the Buchanans, Mr. and Mrs.”

The man and woman gave miserable nods.

“And this is Matthew. He did the artwork on your car.”

The boy cried louder.

His father said, “Cut that the hell out. At least face up to it and don’t be a coward, goddammit.”

The boy continued to cry.

Buchanan shot up and walked to the couch, a big, soft man. He took hold of the boy’s wrists and yanked them away. The boy bent low, tried to bury his face between his knees. His father reached under and forced his head upward, gripping him by the jaw.

“You look at them, goddammit! Face up to it, or it’ll be even worse for you, I promise.”

The boy’s face was pasty and snot-smeared, his mouth lopsided and grotesque in his father’s grasp. He clenched his eyes shut. Buchanan swore.

Mrs. Buchanan took a step toward her son. Her husband’s eyes warned her off. His hand tightened. The boy yelped in pain.

“Easy,” said Milo. He touched Buchanan’s arm. The man stared at him furiously, then backed off.

“Sit down, sir,” said Milo gently.

Buchanan returned to the recliner, drawing his robe around him and looking away from the rest of us.

Milo said, “Matt, this is Dr. Overstreet. Principal of the Hale school, but you probably know that, don’t you?”

The boy stared at Linda, terrified, then clamped his eyes shut.

Linda said, “Hello, Matthew.”

The boy buried his face again.

His father whipped around and said, “Say it!”

The boy mumbled something.

Buchanan was up in a flash. His right arm shot out and the boy’s head snapped back.

Mrs. Buchanan cried out.

Milo said, “That’s enough! Sit down!”

Buchanan put his hands on his hips and stared at Milo. “I want him to say it.”

“Pete,” said his wife.

Her husband pointed a finger at her. “You keep the hell out of this!”

“Mr. Buchanan,” said Milo, “let’s not make things worse than they are. Why don’t you just sit down?”

“I’da been listened to in the first place,” Buchanan said, “there’da been no trouble. He did it. He’s got to face up to it- no more coddling.” He tried to stare down Milo, gave up and glowered at his wife.

Milo said, “You’re absolutely right, sir. Face up is exactly what he needs to do. So let’s give him a chance to do that.”

Buchanan looked at his son. “Say it!”

The boy choked out a “sorry” between sobs.

“Sorry, ma’am!” barked his father.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“He really is,” said Mrs. Buchanan, looking at Linda. “He’s never done anything like this before and never will again. We’re all so sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, for God’s sake,” said her husband. “What in hell do we have to apologize for? Except maybe for your coddling him, giving him everything he whines for so he’s never had to take any goddam responsibility for himself.”

“Pete, please.”

“Don’t Pete please me!” said Buchanan. “Just stop getting in the way and let me handle this the way it should have been handled a long time ago.” He extended a pair of big white hairy fists.

His wife bit her lip and turned away. The boy had stopped crying long enough to follow the parental skirmish.

Buchanan Senior turned his back on him and approached Linda. His lip was quivering and I noticed that one eye drooped lower than the other. “Ma’am, I’ve got a President’s last name. I believe in this country. A deep belief. We’ve got soldiers in our family going way back, generations. I did my time in Korea, active duty, got the papers to prove it. So we sure don’t encourage any Nazi talk around here. He musta picked it up on that crap he plays all the time- rock videos. Which is long gone from this house, that’s for sure.”

An angry look over his shoulder.

The boy covered his face again.

“Don’t you dare when I’m talking to you!” shouted his father. “Face up, goddammit!”

He turned and moved toward his son. Milo got between them. “I’m going to have to insist that you sit, sir. Now.”

Buchanan tightened, then let out breath.

Milo’s face was a police mask.

Buchanan muttered, then returned to the recliner, picked up the previous day’s newspaper from an end table, and pretended to be interested in the sports section.

His wife’s heavy face was ripe with humiliation.

Milo said, “Dr. Overstreet, if you want to press charges, I’ll have Matt arrested and taken in.”

The boy started crying again. His mother followed suit.

Mr. Buchanan looked at both of them with revulsion.

Linda walked over to the sofa and studied the boy. He tried to avoid her gaze, sniffled, and wiped his nose with his sleeve.

She said, “Why, Matt?”

Fidget. Shrug.

“That’s important for me to know. Before I decide what to do. Why’d you do it?”

The boy mumbled something.

Linda said, “What’s that?”

“Don’t know.”

“You don’t know why you demolished my car?”

Shrug.

“What’d you use?”

“Crowbar.”

“Did you know it was my car?”

Silence.

“C’mon, Matt. You owe me.”

Nod.

“You knew it was my car?”

“Yeah.”

“Why’d you want to hurt me? Have I ever done anything to you?”

Shake of head.

“Then why?”

“The school.”

“What about the school?”

“Bringing the… them in.”

“Who?”

“The niggers and beaners. Everyone said you were bringing them in to take over the neighborhood.”

“Everyone? Who’s everyone?”

The boy shrugged. “Just people.”

Buchanan broke in. “He didn’t hear that here. Not that I approve of what you’ve done, but we stick with the law, go our own way and don’t make trouble for others. And we don’t talk gutter talk. I work with the colored- we get along just fine.”

“What kind of work do you do, Mr. Buchanan?”

He named an electronics company. “Line supervisor. Got seventy-five people under me, plenty of them Mexicans and colored. He didn’t hear that kind of gutter talk here.” To his son: “Did you!”

The boy shook his head.

“It’s the goddam rock videos,” said his father. “And that car- he never shoulda had it. Too damn babyish to wipe his own nose. Look at you!”

Mrs. Buchanan left the room and came back with a box of tissues. She pulled one out and handed it to her son.

He swabbed his nose.

His father said, “Congratulations, smart guy. That Trans Am is history.”

“Dad-”

“Shut up!”

Linda said, “Matt, let me get this straight. You resent me because you think I’m trying to take over your neighborhood by bringing in kids from other neighborhoods. So you smashed up my car.”

Nod.

“How’d you know it was my car?”

The boy said, “Seen you.” Barely audible.

“Was anyone else with you?”

Shake of the head.

“Did anyone else know you were going to do this?”

“No.”

“You just did it yourself.”

Nod.

“Why’d you paint a swastika on the car?”

Shrug.

“Do you know what the swastika stands for?”

“Kinda.”

“Kinda? What does it stand for?”

“Germans.”

“Not Germans,” said his father. “Nazis. Your grandfather fought them.”

Linda said, “Why’d you paint a swastika?”

“Dunno. Just being kinda…”

“Kinda what?”

“Rad, Bad. Like the Angels.”

“Hell’s Angels?”

“Yeah.”

“Christ,” said his father.

Linda said, “What were you doing up so late, Matt?”

Buchanan glared at his wife and said, “Good goddam question.”

The boy didn’t answer.

Linda said, “Matt, I asked you a question and I expect an answer.”

“Cruising.”

“With a crowbar?”

No answer.

“Why’d you have a crowbar with you?”

“To do it.”

“To smash my car with?”

Nod.

Buchanan said, “Talk, goddammit.”

“Yeah,” said the boy.

“So you’d planned to smash my car.”

Glance at his father. “Yeah.”

“For how long?”

“I dunno- few days.”

“Why a few days? What gave you the idea?”

“Her… the shooting.” The boy sat up straighter, doughy face brightening. “It just showed how fu- how trashed everything was, the ni- the black kids and the Mexes. It just showed how ruined everything was and it was the school’s fault.” Turning to his father: “That’s what you and she said.”

Mrs. Buchanan put her hand to her mouth.

“Oh, Christ,” said her husband, blanching. “You goddam little moron! People have opinions- this is America, for Christ’s sake! You express an opinion- you’re supposed to speak your mind. That’s what democracy is. Otherwise it might as well be Russia. But you don’t go around destroying private property for Christ’s sake!”

He turned to Linda. “Listen, ma’am, you’ll be paid every last penny for your car. That Trans Am is going to the used-car dealer tomorrow and every last penny we get from that will go for your car and you’ve got my word on that.”

“Good. I expect payment within a week,” said Linda. “But that’s not enough.”

The boy stared at her, petrified.

“Please,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “don’t make him go to jail. He’s-”

“Not jail,” said Linda. “Too easy. I want more out of him. Some real repentance.” To Matt: “Where do you go to school?”

“Pali.”

“Junior?”

“Sophomore.”

“What time do you get off?”

“Two.”

“He’s in limited academic,” said his mother.

“By two-thirty I want you over at my school. Helping out.”

“How?” said the boy.

“Any way I want you to help. One day you might be scrubbing some graffiti off a wall. Another day you might be working the Xerox machine. Or writing an essay.”

The boy flinched.

“Don’t like to write, Matt?”

“He’s had trouble,” said his mother. “Dyslexia.”

“Then it’ll be especially helpful for him.”

“Yes, it will,” said Mrs. Buchanan. “Yes, it surely will. We do appreciate it. Thank you, ma’am.”

“Detective Sturgis,” said Linda, “I’m willing not to press charges if Matt here cooperates and ends up being a big help to me. On one condition. If he screws up, can I still press them?”

“Absolutely,” said Milo. “I’ll keep the file open, make sure he gets the max, all felonies, tried as an adult.” To Matt: “We’re talking heavy jail time, son.”

“He’ll cooperate,” said his mother. “I’ll see that he-”

Linda said, “Matt? You understand what’s going on?”

“Yeah- yes. Ma’am. I will. I… I’m really sorry. It was dumb.”

“Then I’m willing to give you a chance.”

Mrs. Buchanan poured out copious thanks.

Mr. Buchanan seemed to sag in his chair, looking older, smaller, the strain of macho pretense lifted from tired shoulders.

He said, “You’re one lucky camper, mister. And you haven’t heard from me, yet.”