We Know

Chapter 12

With $180,000 slung over one shoulder, I walked as casually as I could back toward my condo. The nearest parking space I'd found was five blocks away, not bad considering that it was past nine o'clock and folks had slotted their cars for the night. I paused to glance in store windows and pretended to tie my shoelaces to check if anyone was following me. All these years later and here I was again, edgy as a fugitive.

As I approached the corner mart, a woman with pursed lips confronted a massive man, his rotund form draped with layers of ripped, dirt-blackened clothing. Even the real-estate prices hadn't driven the smart homeless people out of temperate Santa Monica.

The woman pulled a dollar bill from her purse and handed it to him. "Do not spend this on alcohol."

"Absolutely not, ma'am."

His benefactor's Lexus chirped twice, and she climbed in and drove off. He heard my footfall and turned at my approach, scratching his bloated belly. Despite a leonine mess of curly hair and a nose swollen to absurdity from weather and alcohol, he had astute, intelligent features.

His face lit up. "Nick, I'm two bucks shy of a pint."

I dug in my pocket, came up with a few crumpled bills. "Do not spend this on alcohol."

Homer smiled, showing off his true-yellows. The bills disappeared into his pawlike hand.

I'd met him not at the various soup kitchens and shelters where I'd worked but on the street. Homer was one of the stubborn ones, who preferred rooting in garbage cans and sleeping under the open sky. Foolishly, I admired him for that. Working with the homeless could drive you nuts, because you wound up liking the right people for the wrong reasons. But I think I took to Homer- and my work-because I'd also lived in the awful crush of imposed anonymity. A few times I'd been one bounced check from the street. Homer's wryness about his fate had touched a nerve with me from the start. He was as amused as he was resigned, in on the existential joke. Where I'd fought tooth and nail not to slide over the edge, he'd long ago embraced despair, and that made him a seer of sorts, a guide through an underworld I'd only glimpsed.

But Homer also stood out because, in a community of fragmented minds and souls, he'd managed to keep some part of himself intact. On an outreach shift a few years ago, I'd turned my back on a bulky schizophrenic living out of a park utility shed, and the guy had taken a swing at my head. Homer, who'd followed along with me in hopes of free lunch, had tried to flop on his shoulders but misjudged his jump and landed on a water fountain. The guy rang my bell pretty hard before I recovered and subdued him with the help of a coworker. Homer seemed utterly unshaken by the episode; his only injury was where he'd hit his funny bone on the water fountain's spout. He'd shrugged off my gratitude, but I'd never looked at him the same. Whoever said it was the thought that counts was sure as hell right when it came to going up against a 280-pound schizo off his risperidone.

I hurried into the store, Homer at my heels, and snatched a Los Angeles Times from the stack. "Have you eaten?" I asked.

"No."

"If I give you a couple more bucks, will you buy a sandwich?"

He nodded his head.

"Come on, then." I detoured to the refrigerated aisle, and Homer perused the selections with maddening thoroughness. Hacmed watched us closely from behind the counter. "How's an Italian sub sound?" I asked, shifting the cash on my back and trying to move things along.

"A lotta fat in mortadella," Homer said.

"Do you have one in the back without mortadella?" I called over.

"For Jesus sake, Homer, is there not expression about beggar and chooser?" Hacmed looked at me and I looked back, and he sighed and went through a curtain that looked like something from a drive-through car wash.

While Homer waited at the counter, staring at the alcohol cabinet, I searched out the prepaid cell phones and grabbed a few from the hook. Hacmed returned, and we paid and walked out, Homer sliding the pint of whiskey into a ragged pocket and munching away, bits of bread clinging to his beard.

"Can I get a shower?" he asked.

"Thursdays only," I said. "That's the deal. You can wait until tomorrow."

"I don't see what the difference is."

"The difference is, if you shower whenever you want at my place, then you can start paying rent or putting out."

"Okay. Tomorrow." He slid down the wall, kicking his legs out at a flung-doll angle, and readied himself for the next passerby. "Do I look sufficiently abject?"

I gave him the thumbs-up and rushed home, reading the paper. Front and center, the article about the San Onofre face-off was vague, all quotations coming from "high-placed government officials." It mentioned neither Charlie/Mike Milligan nor me. A terrorist whose name couldn't be released due to security considerations had been thwarted in a plot to blow up the nuclear power plant. Bland as the story was, it had pushed the debate roundup, more flattering to Caruthers, to below the fold.

Evelyn Plotkin was in the lobby sorting through her mail and dumping the flyers into the trash bin. She had on a neck brace.

"Evey. Are you okay?"

She was holding her eyeglasses up before an envelope, but she let them fall back around her neck. "Not really. I'm feeling very weak. I haven't eaten all day."

"Why not?"

"I didn't want my mouth to be full of food if you should call to let me know you were all right."

I'd already hurried into the elevator, but I dug deep for patience, shouldered out, and walked over. She appraised the small wound on my face with heightened gravity, then gave me a warm, clutchy hug, the kind only mothers give.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Who did that to you?"

"The Secret Service. There was a mix-up. They confused me for someone else." I got on the elevator again but stuck my foot out just before the doors closed. "By the way, did one of the agents call you to apologize?"

She looked at me like I was out of my mind, then laughed.

The elevator closed, shutting me in with my anger at Sever for ignoring my only request. I rode up, the rucksack sitting heavily on my shoulder. The hoarded cash likely took Charlie out of whistle-blower contention, which meant that his involvement was less than honorable. Given the two $10,000 stacks with matching purple bands Charlie had brought with him to San Onofre, I figured he'd started with two hundred grand. A heist? Extortion money? Terrorist funds? Or a payment? For what service? Aside from $180,000 and a key, Charlie had barely left behind an imprint. He was a phantom. A cipher.

None of that troubled me much. His association with Frank did.

The crime-scene tape across my dark doorway reminded me of the mess awaiting me. I yanked it down and stepped in, dumping the rucksack.

A rustle startled me around, the shadow on my wrecked couch resolving slowly as a feminine form, and then Induma's voice came out of the darkness. "Love what you've done with the place."

"Jesus, you scared the hell out of me." I righted a tipped-over floor lamp and clicked it on. "Why didn't you turn on a light?"

She shrugged. "Didn't want to be presumptuous." She was leaning on the torn arm of the couch with her legs tucked beneath her, her dark skin beautiful even in the clinical halogen glow. She was yoga fit but carried enough extra weight to curve where she was supposed to. Her high cheeks tended plump, and an emerald glittered in the side of her nose. She was Indian before it came into style, growing up right here in Brentwood, and she spoke with a casual L.A. intonation that caught most people by surprise.

In the year that we dated, just before her money really started flowing in, we never really discussed my life from before I moved back to L.A. Induma had something of her parents' Buddhist restraint. She never pushed for more answers than I offered and was glad to give me space as long as I adored her-which wasn't hard-and as long as I was honest. And I was honest, but at the same time I let myself off the hook for lies of omission.

Standing the front door on end, I pushed it to the frame.

She gestured at it. "How will I get out?"

"Oh, yeah, right." I placed it a few inches offset from the jamb.

"Wendy called, said you no-showed for your interview. I figured something was up."

"I'm sorry-I meant to call."

She glanced at the phone, still in pieces on the kitchen counter. Her mouth tightened, but she didn't comment. "The nice hysterical woman downstairs gave me a version of what happened. It sounds like you're in the middle of whatever you've spent your life afraid you'd be in the middle of."

I said, "Yes."

"Come here." She rested a hand on my cheek, tilted my head to get a better look at the wound. Her concern turned to anger. "Is there someone- a lawyer, cop, whoever-you know who can help you navigate this?"

I thought about it. "No."

"Is there anyone you'd want to call?"

"Bugs Bunny."

Her burgundy lipstick set off her smile, the perfect whiteness of her teeth. "What's he do when he gets in a jam?"

"Cross-dresses."

"Hmm. Maybe it's time to look for some new allies. Or new candor with old ones." She leveled that cool stare at me, in case I hadn't figured out that it was a challenge.

I cleared my throat, then cleared it again. "If I gave you an address, could you look online and find out about whoever's renting the place?"

"Probably." She cocked her head, grinned pertly. "What address?"

"It belonged to the guy who was killed last night at San Onofre."

"Okay," she said, processing. "Okay. Guy have a name?"

I jotted down the address on a junk-mail flyer and handed it to her. "I was told it's Mike Milligan."

She took the paper with a flick of her hand. "I'll help you on two conditions. First, you're coming over for dinner tomorrow night. I'm making puliyogare."

"Will Alejandro be there?" Her boyfriend was dense and exceptionally good-looking, so of course I was mortally jealous of him. She nodded, so I said, "Fine. Second condition?"

"You tell me who you really are."

Her directness put me back on my heels. "This is something that happened to me. That's happening to me. But it's not who I am."

If the vehemence of my voice startled her, she didn't show it. "Okay," she said. "But there was always a part of your life that you avoided. You can't deny that. It's why we never got past where we did." She kept her eyes on mine, unafraid to press the point. "And now? This?" She gestured to the turmoil of my condo. "It's a whole different thing. I need to know what I'm prying into for you, what's really going on. I never got to know all of you when we were together. And that was fine. But if I'm gonna help you, I need to know now."

My apartment felt suddenly stuffy, and I realized I'd broken a sweat. "I… I can't do that."

"New alliances, pal. They come at a price." She extended the paper, holding it pinched between her thumb and forefinger, ready to drop.

I'm not sure how long I stared at her, but she didn't lower her gaze. I'd always told myself that if I had my past to relive, I'd make different choices. I looked around at the mounds of hurled clothes, the clumps of couch stuffing, the strewn papers, the offset front door. Maybe this was, bizarrely, my shot at a fresh start.

I crossed and sat on the gutted couch. Induma shadowed me, sitting also and leaning against the arm to face me. My throat was dry and my thoughts jumbled, but patience was one of Induma's virtues.

I made a few mental runs at the beginning before I forced it out. "My stepfather was murdered when I was seventeen." Saying it aloud gave it a profound power that I couldn't have imagined. But I was talking. The words poured out. I told her everything. The Zapruder tape and Isabel McBride on the pitcher's mound and the way the calluses on Frank's heels scraped the floorboards as he died. I told her about the dark sedan trolling the street, the phone call telling me to come outside, my trip to the Metropolitan Detention Center, the envelope stuffed with traveler's checks.

And then I told her the rest.