Wild Instinct

17

“Mr. Gale? My name is Norris Kennedy. I was a friend of Bennet Tarlow. I remember you from a fight in Las Vegas — Fury-Wilder three.”

Early morning in San Juan Capistrano, Gale still in bed, sunlight streaming into the little bedroom in the house where he grew up.

It’s just hours after being invited to hell by Vernon Jeffs.

And less than an hour since he sent off the search warrant request to the Honorable Carl Schmidt for the home and white Ford Econoline belonging to Vernon Jeffs.

And learned that no prints of Jeffs were found in Tarlow’s Newport Beach home.

“When can we meet?” he asks.

“I’m in Laguna. Moulin on Forest?”

Gale and Mendez arrive first and take an outside table far in a corner. The café is busy as always this morning, mostly locals and their dogs, who all seem to know each other, and plenty of well-heeled tourists tucking into their crepes, omelets, and lattes.

Norris Kennedy is much as Gale remembers her, a pretty redhead with one dimple and a measured smile, shapely.

Introductions but no small talk.

“I didn’t call sooner because I had no idea who would kill Bennet,” Norris says.

“Do you now?”

She gives Gale an assayer’s stare, unblinking dark brown eyes boring into him, then Mendez.

“He was one of the most energetic, ambitious, and complex men I’ve ever known,” she says. “I was a city attorney in Las Vegas at the time, specializing in gaming and hospitality, so I’ve met more than a few people like that. Businessmen, politicians, gangsters, Hollywood. The gamut. I could go on and on about Tarlow but I won’t.”

The detectives’ silence draws her out. “The Tarlow Company is a house divided,” she says. “Bennet and his father detested each other. His stepmother took her stepson’s side on most things. The big issue was always profit. Bennet, in his father’s eyes, was a mediocre builder and a poor businessman. Bennet thought of his dad as a money-grubber and a bore. Then there’s the patriarch, the original Bennet Tarlow himself, strong but mostly silent at ninety, presiding over the world from his mansion overlooking Crystal Cove in Newport Beach.”

A waiter brings them breakfast. A little dog in a blue vest, pulling on his leash and wagging his tail pleadingly, puts his front paws on Norris Kennedy’s bistro chair before his owner yanks him away.

“Sorry, Norris,” he says. “You know how he likes you. Jasper, sit!”

“No problem, Bob. He won’t get this breakfast!”

“Jasper, heel.”

The three begin breakfast in silence, Gale stealing a long look at Norris while she shakes pepper onto her omelet. She’s less effusive than he remembered her, more matter-of-fact, and somehow more beguiling.

“What?” she asks Gale.

“Nothing. Just observing.”

“That’s Robert Clark,” she says. “He made the classic surf movie Laguna to Mavericks.”

“I loved that movie,” says Gale, who surfed Crystal Cove ineptly, but successfully hunted nearby lobsters as a boy.

“I did, too,” says Mendez.

A silent beat.

“Suspects?” asks Kennedy. “Persons of interest?”

“Yes,” says Mendez.

“Who?”

“No,” says Mendez.

“I think you should be looking at Ben’s projects, especially Wildcoast. There’s been resistance within Tarlow Company since the beginning. Resistance from certain county supervisors, support from others. Stiff resistance from Native Californians whose ancestors lived on the land back to ten thousand years ago. Ben was fearful about everything to do with that development. Developers don’t build cities from scratch but that’s what he was trying to do. I can’t tell you how many very intense phone calls he had. Sometimes late at night.”

“Names?” asks Gale. “Companies? Organizations?”

“No. He’d always politely excuse himself, go to another room, and close the door. I certainly heard the word ‘Wildcoast’ several times. Do you have his phone?”

“We think the killer destroyed and dumped it,” says Mendez.

Gale looks over at the surfer twins, and their athletic, probably prosperous parents. Exactly the kind of people who want to live in Wildcoast, he thinks. Wonders if they might even qualify to buy a home in one of the “affordable” tracts.

“It’s hard to believe that the Tarlow Company could be divided on Wildcoast,” he says.

“There’s something at stake there that I don’t understand,” says Norris. “I tried to talk to Bennet about it, straight on. More than once. But I didn’t really know what questions to ask. I didn’t have a place to begin, other than his constant agitation, and the phone calls he wouldn’t let me hear. He deflected. Evaded.”

“Which of the Orange County supervisors are opposed to Wildcoast?”

“Kevin Elder, Seventh District, is concerned. That’s where Wildcoast would be.”

“Grant Hudson’s boss and idol,” says Mendez.

“Grant is insufferable,” says Norris. “Ben could hardly be in the same room with him. Kevin, on the other hand, is a decent man. Liberal and left, for an Orange County pol. Like Bennet. Environmentally aware, like Bennet. A single guy, enjoying it. Like Bennet. Tell him hello from me.”

“Do you know Vernon Jeffs?” asks Gale.

“Never heard that name,” says Norris Kennedy. “Your interesting person?”

“Big guy,” says Gale. “Bodybuilder. Tends bar, up in Huntington.”

“Doesn’t sound like Tarlow material,” she says.

Another silent bump, then:

“I do think Bennet was killed over something in his work,” says Norris. “We’re talking about billion-dollar rivers of money rolling through the Tarlow Company every year, for years to come. Billions of dollars and some very headstrong people.”

“Family?” asks Mendez.

“Certainly not,” says Norris, dismissively. “But someone close, outer circle. Someone with a lot at stake in Wildcoast, the many-billion-dollar city he wanted to build.”

“Like who?” asks Mendez.

“No, don’t be crude. I have no idea who. I hope you weren’t expecting any.”

“An investigation like this is never that easy,” Gale says.

“What on earth do you mean by that?”

“The opposite of crude.”

“Okay, but I can’t see the Tarlows opening up to you about their company or their golden boy.”

Gale, from the start, has seen this as a killing for money or revenge. Which might very easily involve a gun for hire. The gun being a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol, easily concealed from Tarlow and fired point-blank, twice, into the back of his head. The barrel of which will have left unique tool marks on the bullets they’ve recovered. If they can find the gun, that is. Not likely, if the shooter is a pro, or even just reasonably careful.

Norris Kennedy casts a glance at the nearest diners, then leans forward and speaks softly, her West Texan accent drifting through the voices and the clinking of dishes.

“There are secrets, Mr. Gale.”

“Such as?” asks Mendez.

“Bennet’s stepmother, Camile, seduced him as a boy. He was seventeen. She groomed him. One time, one night. On an Amazon birdwatching trip she planned for them. It scarred him terribly.”

“In what ways?” asks Mendez.

“He grew up emotionally remote. Almost hidden. Sweet and doting, like the boy she destroyed. He surrounded himself with women not so much for love, or even company, but for protection. He couldn’t get close to us. He didn’t trust us because he didn’t trust her.”

Camile Tarlow, thinks Gale. From his boyhood he has only scattered and dim memories of her, a blond bombshell who had exploded and disappeared.

Once a fixture in the Southern California media, now reclusive, seldom photographed, never interviewed.

Norris glances at arriving customers, who are choosing a table adjacent.

She stands and asks them, “Would you mind sitting over there? We need privacy and it’s a better table anyhow.”

The dad is a young surfer still in his half-john wet suit and flip-flops. His wife is clad likewise, as are two children, a boy and a girl, twins by the look of them.

“Sure,” says the dad. “Cool.”

The mom stares at Norris.

“Thank you! You’re a prince,” Norris says, sitting back down. “Where was I?”

“Tarlow hid behind women but didn’t trust them,” says Gale.

“I didn’t feel hidden behind at first,” says Norris. “He was sweet and attentive and deferential. Eager to please. Always in touch when one of us was out of town. Thoughtful gifts. Wonderful travel, though I always paid my own way. We chased beautiful birds all over the world, all so Benny could photograph them. I’m sure you saw the pictures in his Laguna home. But... over time, we didn’t go further. He couldn’t. He was guilty about what he’d done. The more he tried to bury his guilt with abstinence and gifts, the more angry and depressed he became. We broke up a year ago. A mutual decision.”

Norris sets her napkin on her chair and heads into the café proper, restroom-bound is Gale’s guess.

Mendez shakes her head. “Maybe I believe this chick and maybe I don’t. What’s her motivation? Why wait until now? Hmmm. Why was she on Tarlow’s calendar the week before he died, if they’d broken up a year before?”

Norris is back five minutes later. Lipstick fresh and hair brushed. She sits down, works her sunglasses from her purse and puts them on.

“No, Detectives, Benny didn’t hide what happened, but it was pretty much the last thing we talked about before he moved on. He was emotionally and physically absent long before I learned that ugly truth. He said I was the first and only person he’d told. Said nobody else in the world knew, not even his father. I don’t necessarily believe that, but I choose to. Out of respect for his beautiful nature and his scars.”

“Why tell you the secret he couldn’t tell anyone else?” asks Mendez.

“He loved and trusted me.”

Norris Kennedy takes a sip of her bubbling water and nods. “And I’m telling it to you so you can more accurately understand your... victim.”

“What was their relationship after?” asks Gale. “Camile and stepson Bennet?”

“Ben said very little about her. Mostly casual references and factoids. ‘Camile’s great. Haven’t seen much of her lately. Dinner with Dad and maybe Cam on Saturday. She’s always a maybe. Sorry I can’t invite you but I’m protecting you, believe me. Maybe later.’ Now I sound like her! What he actually sounded like was a twelve-year-old boy. Before the fall. He told me she’d went MIA from his life, after that fall. Liked to travel with friends. Liked buying European art. Not clothes, though, because as a newly minted recluse, she almost never went out. She day-traded on her computer, up in her private suite. Made and lost fortunes. Then off to buy more art. Opened a gallery for it in Newport Beach, but never even went in except on Sundays and Mondays when it was closed. It’s still there.”

“Why were you on Bennet’s calendar the week before he died?” asks Mendez.

“You people are thorough,” says Norris. “The truth is, since we’d parted ways, I occasionally chased him down and forced my way into his life for an hour. Lunch here or coffee or a walk on the beach.”

Gale thinks of Tarlow’s calendared date with Patti DiMeo, right here in this café, the morning after he died.

“Do you know Patti DiMeo?” Gale asks.

“No. Should I?”

“She’s a real estate broker on Lido,” says Gale. “Bennet had a coffee date with her, set for the morning after he died. Right here, where we sit.”

Norris looks away from Gale, then quickly back.

“Pretty?”

“Yes,” says Mendez.

“Well, maybe she was to be his next woman to hide behind. I met others when I was with him, and others since we broke up. And, of course, there were more, down the years before we met.”

“I’m sorry to bring back unpleasant memories,” says Gale.

“It’s part of the job,” says Mendez.

“I am a big girl now,” says Norris. “Like the Dylan song.”

“Did Tarlow bet on the Fury-Wilder rematch?” asks Gale.

“Of course.”

Another absorbent quiet from the detectives.

“He had half a million on Deontay by knockout in the fourth,” says Norris. “But Deontay got knocked out.”

“Who did you have?” asks Gale.

She nods. “A hundred grand on Fury by knockout in the eleventh. It hit at eight to one. My treat for a week in Bali and some incredible birds of paradise. Beautiful place, beautiful birds, beautiful photographs. I remember he was almost happy then. Almost.”

“Almost a million dollars for you,” says Mendez.

“I bought treasury bills with the rest,” says Norris.

Norris Kennedy sighs and stands.

Gale watches her walk down Forest, toward Coast Highway.

Coast Highway and Wildcoast, thinks Gale.

Wildcoast and Deontay Wilder, knocked out in the eleventh.

Putting eight hundred grand into Norris’s bank account, enough to take her reluctant lover birding in Bali.

A prominent real estate developer wearing a silver pendant of a bird as he gets half eaten by a mountain lion in a county park near the future site of his own dream development.

Gale adds all that Norris has just told him about Camile Tarlow, and the Tarlow Company strife over Wildcoast, to what he’s learned from spending a few hours in Tarlow’s homes in Laguna Beach and Newport.

Considers the coincidences and contradictions, mysteries, deceptions, conspiracy theories, and half-truths that are nothing like those of any homicide he’s ever worked.

Mendez’s phone pings. It’s flat on the table and she screens it with both hands, then lifts it.

“Fuck,” she says softly.

And gives Gale a prohibitive look. “No,” she says, fingers and thumbs flying.

An awkward moment later she’s talking with Grant Hudson, making an appointment with Kevin Elder.

“Three good?” she asks Gale.

“Perfect.”