Wild Instinct

13

Mendez is right about the Newport Beach palace.

It’s a two-story contemporary extravaganza of rock, steel, and glass, overlooking Corona del Mar State Beach. Nothing like the Laguna cottage, Gale notes. A wall of Italian cypress trees, trimmed flat on their tops, surround it on three sides. Gale has gotten the code from Bennet Tarlow’s father.

He parks in the porte cochere, leaving room for Mendez. Steps out of the vehicle and sees how different the grounds are here, compared with Tarlow’s Laguna cottage: cactus and succulents and decorative reeds, a rectangular pit of aqua-colored glass globes.

He waits for Mendez, who is still in her black Explorer, looking down at her phone, thumbs moving.

Inside, this home looks less lived-in than the cottage. Neat and minimal living room. Hard angles. Gray, black, and white. No clutter, few accent pieces or works of art. Sunlight floods in. It’s already warm in here, and Gale wonders idly what the air conditioner must cost to run in the summer.

He calls Tarlow again. Nothing. Gale knows the damned phone is deep in a lake or the ocean or maybe smashed to tiny pieces being picked over by the seagulls in a landfill.

Hope is cruel, he thinks. Desire for something you know you will never have.

The dining room has a large glass tabletop supported by wooden caissons. No dust on the table. Three candlesticks in crystal holders, never lit. Twelve black enamel chairs.

The kitchen is sleek and modern, with stainless-steel appliances and a black granite island. A black glass-top stove and a black built-in oven beside it.

“Place looks staged,” says Mendez. “Like it’s for sale.”

The black granite counter has four steel-backed barstools along one side and a large, glossy white bag sitting in the middle. There’s a red dragon on it. The handles look like bamboo and the bag says:

In smaller print below, Mendez reads the street address, phone number, and email.

A delivery slip lies on the counter beside the bag.

“The last supper,” says Mendez, taking up the slip. “Delivery dispatch time, six fourteen P.M. Driver is Amanda. Two number twenty-fives. Medium sake. Sixty-five dollars and seventy-five cents. Paid with a Mastercard, nothing on the tip line.”

“Tarlow liked cash,” says Gale, remembering the way he palmed the tip money on fight night at Caesars Palace.

Mendez sets the slip back on the counter and photographs it.

Two red place mats lie in front of two stools, but there’s a third stool between them with no place mat, as if whoever had last dined here were very large people.

Or maybe, Gale guesses, didn’t know each other well enough to sit closely side by side. White plastic chopsticks and their paper wrappers rest on napkins — one neatly folded and the other wadded into a loose ball.

“Choice place for fingerprints,” says Mendez. “Black everything. And white plastic chopsticks. The print techs will eat this room alive.”

Tarlow the engineer folding neatly, thinks Gale.

White Van, the wadder-upper.

Or maybe Vern.

Or someone else...

The detectives contemplate this gust of activity within the still, silent angles of the house.

Gale pulls the wastebasket from under the sink and sets it on the counter, noting four black Styrofoam containers, lids locked, and the emptied soy sauce packets. A metal, half-liter can of sake and a half-pint of cheap bourbon.

Tarlow and White Van, respectively? Gale wonders.

The two downstairs bedrooms have en suite baths, and, like the living and dining rooms, are unbothered by the details of everyday living.

The second-story master suite takes up the whole floor. Plaster walls with oversized windows and skylights to let in even more light, as if the windows might need help. A steel beam ceiling.

Mendez chooses one of three remote controllers from the neatly made bed and opens the skylights and some of the windows.

Hum of motors, a gust of fresh air.

“It’s not for sale, is it?” asks Mendez.

“Patti DiMeo would have mentioned that. No signs.”

“Why would an award-winning home builder live in such an ugly place?” she asks.

“Kind of a broad question, but maybe he’s scourging himself,” says Gale.

Mendez gives him a look, her hard face beveled in a slant of sunlight. “Scourging himself for what? His fortune? His cutesy looks? The way his family has usurped Indigenous land and Indians here for, what — a century and a half? Your ancestors among them?”

“My ancestors? Yes,” says Gale, remembering his great-grandmother’s tales of her mother’s long hours of labor at the Mission San Juan Capistrano, sewing the bedsheets slept on by the soldiers in the garrison. Mending their uniforms and emptying the officers’ bed pots.

Then off to Mass, morning and evening.

“Maybe he’s punishing himself for all his girlfriends,” says Gale.

“He doesn’t seem the type,” says Mendez. “Players aren’t wired for regret. Only good people are. In my experience.”

“Tarlow didn’t act like a player when I worked security for him,” Gale says. “He was very attentive to Norris. None of that ‘arm candy’ posturing.”

A skeptical look from Mendez, then a moment of silence in the hot glass cage of a bedroom.

“I didn’t mean to pry about your family and your Indian background, Lew. I read that Los Angeles Times article about you in Afghanistan. Dark stuff. But you came off as a man on the mend. A man who was paying up.”

“Me and my big mouth. I didn’t have to say all that to the Times.”

“Maybe you needed to,” says Mendez. “Good things grow with oxygen and light.”

“So does cancer.”

“Don’t let yourself go there.”

“Noted.”

“How do you pronounce that tribe of yours?”

“Ah-hawsh’amay.”

“Again, slower?” she asks, her face intent with concentration.

“Ah-hawsh’amay.”

“Ah-hawsh’amay.”

Then an awkward silence.

“Let’s get ourselves to Bamboo,” he says.

“Good. I’m starting to feel lucky.”

Bamboo is a glassy, well-lit restaurant on Coast Highway, minimally full with late-lunch customers.

Amanda Cho is at the register, slim, short, and smiling, with red streaks in her long black hair.

Her smile goes away when Mendez tells her why they’re here, and they show their badges. She says something in Chinese back into the kitchen, then leads the detectives to an empty table by the window.

“Tea or drink?” she asks.

They decline and Amanda sits. Looking from Gale to Mendez and back, she shakes her head, a cloud of suspicion passing behind her eyes.

Gale takes out his notebook and a pen.

“What you say to us is confidential and protected,” says Mendez. “You have nothing to fear.”

“Yes, okay,” she says. “Mr. Tarlow was kind man and very polite. What happened to him is tragedy. I couldn’t believe a mountain lion would do this. I delivered dinner to him the night before he was found in the mountains. I delivered to him once and sometimes twice a week when he was home. I know he was very rich and traveled a lot. Do you have a suspect, or an interesting person?”

“We’re close,” says Mendez. “Can you tell us the day and time you arrived at Mr. Tarlow’s home?”

“Thursday evening, a little after six. Mr. Tarlow buzzed me through the gate and I parked in the porte cochere.”

“Were there any vehicles parked there already?”

“Yes, Mr. Tarlow’s new blue SUV, and one old white van.”

Gale’s eardrums do that funny, good-news pulse.

Mendez smiles coolly.

“Describe the van,” says Gale.

“Old and big. A commercial van. Like for deliveries. No windows.”

“California plates?”

Amanda purses her lips. “I think so.”

“Did you see anything unusual or distinguishing about it?” asks Gale.

“No. Just old. I remember all this because I’d seen it there before. Maybe three or four times in the last month or two.”

A good heart flutter for Gale.

“Did you see rust on the van?” asks Gale.

“No.”

“A sticker on the bumper for the Bear Cave?”

“No. I didn’t look at it very hard.”

“But you saw it every other week?” asks Mendez.

“Yes, maybe approximately. I always thought it was a funny vehicle to be at Mr. Tarlow’s house. So plain, and everything about Mr. Tarlow so perfect.”

“Did Tarlow pay you at the door?” asks Mendez. “Or did he invite you in?”

“Always he invited me in.”

“Was he alone?” asks Gale.

“No. Jeff was there. The white van was his. When the van was at Mr. Bennet’s, so was Jeff.”

“Last name?” asks Mendez.

Amanda shakes her head. “I don’t know his last name.”

“Describe him,” says Mendez.

“Big man,” says Amanda. “Tall and wide. Muscles. Red hair. Red beard and mustache. Tan eyes. Jeans and Metro Gym T-shirts.”

“Tell me about that face,” says Gale.

A beat of silence. Amanda looks away, Gale watching her eyes revert to some other place for counsel and, probably, judgment.

“A big face, like the rest of him. He looked as if he owned me and expected to... do whatever he want to me. These are feelings I had. He never threatened or touched. He said almost nothing. But he spoke through his eyes. The first time I was there with both men, Mr. Tarlow tipped me fifty dollars. Always fifty. The next time, Jeff gave me seventy-five. And the next also. New scratchy bills, like from a bank.”

Gale pictures the big red man looming over petite Amanda, boring into her with his tan cat eyes and pressing the crisp bills into her small pale hand.

“Amanda,” says Mendez. “What relationship do you think the men had?”

“I wondered from the first time. Mr. Tarlow? Nice clothes. Always good hair and shaved. A black tuxedo once. But Jeff? Jeans loose and he always pulling them up. Always the black Metro Gym T-shirts. Motorcycle boots scuffed, with those big brass rings.”

“How did they act toward each other?” asks Mendez.

Amanda nods. “Like when I was there, I was interrupting something important. They seemed like men getting ready to do something after they ate. There was a feeling of... purpose.”

“Not friends?”

“No. Different. Maybe like... on the same team.”

“Who seemed in charge?”

“Mr. Bennet.”

“Why didn’t you call the police when you learned that Mr. Tarlow was murdered the night you saw him and Jeff?” asks Gale.

She looks away, through one of the Coast Highway windows.

“ICE. And I thought you would contact me. Maybe find the Bamboo bag and the delivery bill.”

“We don’t care about your legal status, Amanda,” says Gale. “We’re not even allowed to ask.”

A small, slightly embarrassed smile. “Thank you, Detectives.”

“Thank you,” they both say.

Gale and Mendez sit together in Gale’s SUV while he runs a warrants check on Jeff Vern. The Explorer’s department computer screen is clear and bright.

Gale makes sure his Warrants Department knows he’s on the Tarlow murder and needs this information soon, like, right now. Wants it sent to Mendez’s email also.

A moment later, six Jeff Verns come onscreen, but none of them are Amanda’s burly, bearded redhead.

Not close.

Next, Gale receives two Jeff Vernes and a Jeff Vern — firm nos.

Flips it to Vern Jeff and strikes out completely.

Same with Verne Jeff.

Vernon Jeff is a strikeout, too, as is Jeff Vernon.

Gale and Mendez sit in pissed-off silence. Gale starts the SUV to run the AC and they turn the vents into their faces.

“Thank you,” she says.

“I played Little League with a guy named Jeffs,” says Gale. “Burt Jeffs. Scrappy guy, third base, big ears.”

“You know,” says Mendez. “The ‘s’ might be easy for a Chinese immigrant to miss.”

Vern Jeffs gets Gale exactly nowhere with Warrants, but he redirects to Vernon Jeffs.

A moment later, Mendez gives her screen a hard-faced smile.

Vernon Jeffs is a ringer for the man described by Amanda Cho.

Age fifty.

Six-four, 260 pounds.

Gale’s heart thumps like a dryer on tumble.

He’s got a DUI from five years back, a school-zone firearms violation from ten years ago, dismissed, and a battery charge that got him six months when he was twenty-one.

Mendez grabs her phone, throws open the door of the Explorer, and slams it shut.

Gale’s eyes are still on the computer screen. The California DMV Law Enforcement database says Jeffs owns a fifteen-year-old Ford Econoline. DMV has the VIN but doesn’t specify color.

Gale checks the Federal Firearms Registry, then ATF, but neither has firearms registered in his name.

Mendez swings back into the SUV, a small smile on her face. “Amanda says it’s him. Absolutely no doubt. She got his face perfectly. Just like the trafficked girls and boys in Vice. They remembered every last detail of the people who sold and raped them.”

Gale calls the Costa Mesa Metro Gym on Harbor, gets the day manager, and asks for Vernon Jeffs.

Never heard of him, so Gale calls the other five Metro Gyms in Orange County, but none of the employees have heard of him either.

It’s almost two o’clock by now, and Gale and Mendez are both starved, so they go back inside and get a couple of #25s — spicy beef chow mein.

A small flickering light goes on in Gale’s racing brain. “The Econoline had a Bear Cave sticker on the bumper, according to Vito Pesco. It’s a biker bar. I knew a guy from Sangin who liked the place. Michael Kobila. We drowned ourselves there, on occasion. Mike used a gun to finish the job.”

“We took down a pedo there last year,” says Mendez. “He was dumb enough to meet our plant there, and the bikers were that close to beating him to death. Which I was kind of pulling for. Funny place for Bennet Tarlow III.”

Gale checks the Bear Cave hours — one P.M. to two A.M. — then calls on speaker.

“Vern Jeffs there?” he asks.

“Who in the hell are you?”

“Lew Gale. Friend of Michael Kobila.”

“Oh, Mikey. Shame. Yeah, Vern’s on nights.”

“I’ll meet you there at nine,” says Daniela.

“Good.”

Gale has a few hours to kill and knows where to kill them. So does Mendez.