Wild Instinct

16

Gale and Mendez sit in his plain-wrap Explorer, casing the Bear Cave from across the street. The bar is part of a strip mall east of the old Huntington Beach downtown. In the streetlights Gale sees some scraggly palms, sagging telephone lines, and an oil pump gnawing patiently in the near dark.

“The pump stinks,” says Mendez.

“The smell of money,” says Gale.

“Smell of benzene and lung cancer. Nice bikes, though.”

Gale counts twelve Harleys, two Indians, and one Kawasaki Ninja parked apart as if segregated. Their chrome and colors ripple in the neon blue of the Bear Cave’s sign.

Gale loves motorcycles. He rode with friends after Sangin but didn’t want to join a club. Sold his Fat Bob for ten thousand dollars and put that down on the 4Runner.

An older white Econoline is parked away from the bar, in front of Hair Affairs salon, long closed for the day. Through his binoculars, in the faint light from the storefront, Gale can see the body rust through his binoculars and the Bear Cave sticker on the bumper.

“Never thought I’d be so happy to see a beat-up old van,” says Gale, entering the license plate numbers on his phone.

“Think it’s enough for a search warrant?”

“No, but I’ll write it up anyway.”

“Jeffs is six-four, two-sixty,” says Mendez. “Red hair and beard, as of last week. I guess we won’t have any trouble spotting him. Interesting sheet, too. A DUI, six months in county for a bar fight, a dropped rap for carrying a gun within a thousand feet of a school. Trunk of his car. Judge ruled the search was illegal.”

“That thousand-feet law is tough,” says Gale. “You’re going past schools you don’t even know are there. On school grounds is a different thing.”

A beat while Mendez composes her rebuttal.

“I think it’s a good law,” says Mendez. “I worry about Jesse at school. It gets into my mom head that a bullied kid, or some crazy, is going to bring his birthday gun to school and open up. Lew, Jesse was bullied into a fight, freshman year. Older kid. Jesse whaled on him. Cost them both three days’ suspension but it never happened again. The two boys actually became friends.”

Gale considers this, wondering if he would have been as good a father as Daniela is a mother. Before the war, he had looked forward to that. But after the war, it was only a distant concept.

Then he was back from Sangin, the hospital weeks, then:

Bourbon, then pain pills, his future shrinking, watching Marilyn’s collapse through the haze.

Seems like hundreds of years ago. At forty-three he feels ancient and futureless and unrecognizable.

He watches as three burly bikers crash through the Bear Cave door and move to their choppers. They do look like bears.

“That’s a happy ending you don’t see every day,” says Gale. “The boys becoming friends, I mean. Happened to me, too. Eighth grade. Some dumb, good-Indian dead-Indian stuff, but it got to me. Charley Webster. We fought and got kicked out for two days. But years later in high school we got to be pretty good friends. Double-dated on grad night at Disneyland.”

In the dark cab, Gale feels Daniela’s eyes on him.

“Are you sizing up how Indian I look?”

“No. God, sorry. Yes.”

“Mom’s Indian and Dad has mostly Spanish blood. I’m the Native and the conquistador, rolled into one. That’s where I get my crazy good looks.”

Mendez thinks of Jesse. A Mexican-American mom and an Irish-American father.

A quick shudder passes through her as she thinks of what happened just hours ago.

The three Harleys make a flatulent exit, passing the oil pump on their way toward the beach. Fog rolls in.

“Ready, partner?” Gale asks.

“Not quite,” says Mendez. “How are we going to do this? Get him to talk to us?”

“Just a meet and greet for starters. The key here, Daniela, is not to really worry him.”

“Just make him think?”

“Let him cook,” says Gale. “And don’t name Amanda Cho. Go vague on her.”

“Let him cook. I like that. Vamos.”

Two bikers at the jammed bar turn and check them out. They look like distance runners, thin bodied, with inked, ropy arms and vests emblazoned with flaming crosses and the words

The bottom rocker says

They glance coolly at Gale, but one offers Daniela a beard-framed smile, and they give up their stools near the serving station.

“You look good enough to eat,” he says. “Jesus loves you and so do I.”

“I’m pure poison,” she says with a sharp little smile.

Gale notes the tables and booths, the kitchen behind a brick half wall in back, the hallway to the restrooms, the low roar of the patrons and the music on the jukebox.

He locks looks with one of the bartenders, filling a pitcher from the tap. He’s tall and wide. Clean-shaven, with short red hair. He’s got the look of menace that Amanda Cho described. Small eyes. Like Vernon Jeffs in his hairy jacket mugs.

The big man sets two full pitchers at the serving station, and a lean woman in a short leather skirt and a sleeveless Bear Cave T-shirt carts them away.

Presumed Jeffs turns to Gale, who shows his star briefly, then slips it away.

“We like cops,” he says, leaning close to cut through the din.

“We like bartenders, Mr. Jeffs.”

Who gives Gale a so-what look. “What’ll it be?”

“Draft Coronas with lime for the lady and me.”

He’s back a minute later with the beers, limes notched into the rims of the glasses.

“I’m Lew, and this is Daniela,” says Gale.

“So cough it up, then.”

“We’re working the murder of Bennet Tarlow.”

“Two little detectives for a big shot like him?”

“You know,” says Mendez. “It’s the size of the fight in the dog, and all that.”

“Cute,” says Jeffs. “You serve, Lew?”

“Three-five, Sangin.”

Jeffs nods. “Bosnia for me, then Congo.”

“Congo?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Got it,” says Gale. “Did you know Bennet Tarlow?”

“No. He came in here a couple times with some friends.”

“Ever been to his home in Newport?”

“Never. Wouldn’t know it if I saw it.”

“Must be some mix-up, then,” says Gale. “We’ve got a witness who said you were at Tarlow’s place last Thursday, the evening he died.”

“Nice bluff,” says Jeffs. “But you don’t have a witness. What you have is someone who saw a guy who looks like me. Or maybe has bad eyesight, or hallucinations.”

“He described you pretty well,” says Mendez.

“I don’t know where he was, lady, but Thursday evening I was with my wife. Right, Mindy?”

The skinny woman in the black leather skirt sets down two empty pitchers and Jeffs takes a handle in each hand, lowers them into the stainless sink.

“Right what,” she says.

“Me and you at home Thursday. Our day off. These cops think I was down in Newport Beach at some rich guy’s house.”

“Well, hell, Vern — let ’em think what they want.”

She gives Gale the once-over, Mendez a dismissive glance.

“The trouble with cops is there’s too many of you,” she says to Gale. “No one’s safe anymore. It’s a police state. We were both home Thursday last, watching TV.”

“Anything good on?” asks Mendez.

“Piss on you,” Mindy says and walks away.

Vern Jeffs shrugs. “I can’t remember. Probably Ozark, again. Like, it’s our fourth time through.”

The other bartender yells something at Jeffs.

“Sorry, Deputies, I got a job to do,” he says. “You want to talk again, charge me for whatever you think I did. I’ll have a lawyer with me.”

He’s back in five minutes.

“What do you need a lawyer for?” asks Mendez.

“’Cause I know you people think you’re tricky. You make shit up. I know that, because I was with my wife on Thursday and I didn’t know Tarlow.”

“We have a few more questions,” says Mendez.

“Arrest me.”

“You don’t want that,” says Gale. “You tell us the truth about that Thursday night, and we’ll be happy if it’s one big mistake.”

“You already know it was a big damned mistake. Fact, I might have to file a complaint against you. Harassment at my workplace. Drinking alcohol while on duty. Harassing my wife.”

“Speaking of alcohol,” says Gale. “A shot of Maker’s Mark?”

Daniela shakes her head.

By now the crowd has thinned out but Jeffs, Mindy, and the second bartender are still hopping.

Jeffs delivers the shot of Maker’s, then hustles off to the other side of the horseshoe bar.

A few minutes later he comes back, wiping his hands on a white towel.

“Your van was seen near the murder site the night Tarlow was killed,” Mendez says. “The rusty white Econoline, down by Hair Affairs right now. It was parked next to Tarlow’s new Suburban. They got it on the Caspers Park campground security camera, plates and all.”

Gale thinks the security camera lie is unnecessary and bad. Didn’t think to tell Mendez not to, but now wishes he had.

Vern smiles, and his tan, mountain-lion eyes glitter.

“Nice try,” he says. “They don’t have security cameras out there. I know ’cause me and Mindy and our club camp out at Caspers a lot.”

“The security cameras are new, and your van is on the video,” says Mendez. “Look, Mr. Jeffs, we think you were with Tarlow before he died. You probably had a perfectly good reason. You probably parted ways long before he was killed. We just want to know why you were there in the first place. Maybe some others were there, too. We need solid intel on Mr. Tarlow to find out who shot him. Can you make a few minutes for us tomorrow morning, downtown sheriff’s building in Santa Ana? Real informal. No lawyers. Mindy, too. Just to clear up some details? Give you a chance to sleep on things.”

“Better yet,” says Gale. “Give us a few more minutes tonight. After your shifts. Coffee’s on us.”

Jeffs sets another pair of beer pitchers into the big sink. Squeezes a plastic bottle of dish soap, runs the water.

“I got nothing to hide and I’m not talking to you. I wasn’t anywhere near Tarlow that night, or any other. Except for here, like I said. I don’t believe you got my van on video. That’s a bluff. Fuck you. Get out of my bar.”

“You and Tarlow walked past the Cottonwood Creek Campground bathrooms the night Tarlow was killed,” says Gale. “We have a witness to that. Tarlow died about fifty yards from there, later that night.”

“I read about the Laotian weed growers,” says Jeffs. “Talk to them. Not a one of them saw me because I wasn’t there.”

“They’re all dead, Mr. Jeffs,” says Mendez. “Last chance to do this the easy way.”

Jeffs spreads his big hands on the bar counter, towering over the detectives. Leans in.

“Go to hell. Both of you. You can’t frame me.”

Gale leaves cash and a good tip, checks to make sure Vern and Mindy aren’t looking, cups the shot glass in a paper napkin and slips it into his pocket.

Back home, he brushes the shot glass with dragon’s blood fingerprint dust — his favorite from his latent fingerprints training.

Three clear prints emerge as the brush lightly passes, one of them a nice, fat, Vern Jeffs’s thumb.

Gale smiles, sips his bourbon, shoots close-ups of the prints and sends them to Osaka to check against the utensils used by Tarlow and Jeffs when they had the Chinese dinner in Tarlow’s Newport Beach house.

Gale then fills out the warrant request form for Judge Carl Schmidt, based on Vito Pesco’s descriptions of the two vehicles in the Cottonwood Creek Campground. One, a new Suburban belonging to Bennet Tarlow III and the other an older Econoline registered to Vernon Jeffs.

Also based on Amanda Cho’s claim that she saw Jeffs with Tarlow the evening before his death.

On the .22 bullets in Tarlow’s head.

And the .22 casings at the kill site.

Give me that gun, Carl, he thinks. The Honorable Schmidt being the Superior Court’s most law-and-order judge.

He’s about to send the request form to Judge Schmidt when his phone buzzes.

“Lew Gale.”

“This is Geronima Mills, returning your call about Wildcoast. Sorry to call so late but I was having a nightmare and woke up thinking that I owed you a call. Frank’s brother. Are you a private or a real detective?”

“Both.”

“Clever.”

“I’m in charge of the case.”

“Do you have a suspect yet?”

“None.”

“Are you trying me on for size, based on my openly hateful reels and videos?”

“Exactly.”

“Try no further, Mr. Gale. The Tarlow family and company have been squatting on Acjacheme land since 1865, when the queen of Spain signed a land grant over to Mexico, who raped and pillaged a little, then sold the land to Bennet Tarlow’s ancestors. Now the Tarlow Company wants to build a city for millionaires there, with no repatriations for the so-called Juaneño Nation, no consideration for our sacred land, culture, religion, or language. For ten thousand years. And certainly no respect for the people themselves. We at Stopwildcoast will do just about anything to keep that hideous thing from ever existing. But. We are not in favor of shooting Bennet Tarlow dead.”

“That post of yours about burning him at the stake and eating his face got my attention, Ms. Mills. And the fact that one of your X tags is Killwildcoast.”

“We live in an age of stagecraft and performance.”

“What do you do in real life?”

“UCI Library. Fifteen bucks an hour.”

“Do you own a twenty-two-caliber semiautomatic handgun?”

“I do. Aluminum, and rose colored. Sold to me as a ‘chick’ gun. Was one used on Tarlow?”

A beat while Gale’s brain whirs.

“We don’t know,” lies Gale. “The lab is working up the firearms and toolmarks.”

“But surely you know what caliber.”

“Yes, a twenty-two. Do you know Vernon Jeffs?”

“I do not.”

“Did you know Bennet Tarlow?”

“I’ve seen him come and go from his company headquarters in Newport Beach. Lately, in a new blue Suburban. I’ve never gotten to shake his soft, puffy hand.”

“Where were you on the evening he died?”

“Which was?”

Gale fills her in.

“Beats me.”

“Get your calendar,” says Gale. “Tell me where you were.”

Geronima Mills’s phone clacks down, and Gale hears the tap of fingers on keys.

“Hmm... Mom’s house. Here’s the number.”

“How come you haven’t been back to school since the murder?” he asks.

A catch of breath, then: “I’ve had enough of Frank and the Grizzlies. They roar but they don’t act. They’re casino chasers. Half of them have little or no Native blood at all.”

“Do you?”

“Half Acjacheme. The unrecognized. Like you and Frank.”

“So, you’ve dropped out?”

“Of college, not the world. I’ll fight Wildcoast tooth and nail. Like the mountain lion that half ate Tarlow. Good luck finding who killed him.”

“Good luck to you, too, Ms. Mills.”

“Have you arrested anyone for slaughtering the Laotians?”

Gale’s heart sinks every time he thinks of those young men, all in their early twenties, according to Coroner Bachstein.

“Not yet.”

“Buy me a drink sometime.”

“Why?”

“I want to know who you are.”

“Maybe.”

Gale hangs up, toasts his laptop with a shot of bourbon, then hits the send button, launching his warrant request to Judge Schmidt.

Showers and gets into bed.

He hears Luis Verdad’s Acjacheme-accented Spanish voice in the rattling of the pages:

Osaka calls a minute later.

“No,” he says, “I can’t match your fingerprint with the Newport house kitchen or dining room.”

“Hell, Glen, that thumb is textbook.”

“We didn’t find any prints that weren’t Tarlow’s. One of my people told me it was the cleanest island counter he’s ever seen. Like housekeeping had just been there. Ditto the cooktop area, the sink, the drawer hardware, the dishes in the sink and the cabinets.”

“What about the plastic chopsticks and the sake can and the bourbon bottle in the trash?”

“Tarlow’s on the can but the bourbon bottle was clean.”

“So Jeffs wiped it all down.”

“Someone did.”

Gale punches off and beds down.

Falls asleep fast, sees the Killer Cat, padding down the hallway of his boyhood home.

The cat stops and looks at Sally’s closed bedroom door, then comes to Gale’s door and sits, tail twitching.

The detective jumps wide-eyed from his bed, lands loudly on the hardwood floor, heart beating hard.