Wild Instinct

24

“Thanks for meeting me on short notice, Daniela,” says Kevin Elder. “I know you’re very busy with Tarlow and other matters.”

“Certainly. I sensed you had things to say that you didn’t want Lew Gale to hear.”

“Yes, that’s true. Did you tell him we were meeting?”

“I did not. What didn’t you want to say in front of him?”

“You cut to the chase.”

“I live for the chase.”

Elder smiles.

Mendez looks at the Grove Club dining room. Right before the dinner rush, quiet. Nods to bartender John Velasquez, who nods back.

“The Grove, right?” she asks. “Hudson told me you insiders never call it the Grove Club.”

“I call it the Grub,” says Elder. “Kind of a contraction, but kind of a description, too.”

“As in grubbing — money and power?”

“You read my mind.”

“What was it you wanted to say but not in front of Lew?”

“Two things, really. One is that Norris Kennedy showed what I think was an unhealthy zeal in helping Bennet pitch Wildcoast.”

“Unhealthy.”

“It was always Wildcoast. Here at the Grub. At my town halls and hearings. Laguna Beach city council forums. City of San Juan Capistrano. County chamber of commerce. Parties, galas, fundraisers. She didn’t quite finish Bennet Tarlow’s sentences, but close. I used to picture Norris with an arm up his shirt, moving his head left and right like a ventriloquist. Moving his jaws.”

Mendez considers this odd image.

“Which, of itself, is not personally damning,” says Elder. “Her interest in Wildcoast, I mean.”

“Then why unhealthy?”

“The intensity of it. The relentlessness. During the year they were together, Bennet went from puppy-love happy to subdued to anxious to frightened to depressed. I saw him a fair amount. I finally asked him what was going on. This was just before they broke up. He told me he loved her but couldn’t go on.”

“Do you think she is in some way a part of his death?”

Mendez studies Kevin Elder’s solemn expression.

“I didn’t until I talked to Ben’s father. Ben had written Norris into his will just weeks before he was killed. To the tune of five million dollars.”

Mendez gets that wonderful pit-of-the-stomach, pieces-falling-into-place feeling. More like boulders dumped in a pile, she thinks. Gets her first glimpse of someone who would directly benefit — apart from the derailing of Wildcoast — from the physical death of Tarlow himself. A bedroom move lowered to street level. Low concept. Big dollars, plus a dash of revenge. Norris as architect, building her fortune on a lover washing his hands of her.

“Beyond interesting,” she says.

“I thought you’d think so.”

“Any of Tarlow’s other women in the will?”

Elder shakes his head. “I didn’t ask that, Daniela. Really, it seemed rude and gigantically none of my business. Tarlow II might tell you. Might.”

Mendez thinks of Norris Kennedy at Moulin, when she ordered the young family to another table so she could talk in privacy to herself and Gale. Thinks of Norris making appointments with Bennet Tarlow, long after their breakup. Of her whisking Bennet off for a week of birdwatching in Bali, financed by her bet on Fury-Wilder III in Las Vegas.

“She has audacity,” says Mendez.

“Indeed. Which raises questions.”

“Have you seen her since the murder?”

“The burial at sea. It was sad. Funny sad, to see Norris and a bevy of Ben Tarlow’s lovers grouped together on the deck in their black dresses, watching the ashes glitter down through the water. Tarlow had donated generously to Save the Whales, and guess what? A Titanic gray whale breached right off the stern, huge fluke waving as it went down, like it was saying bye to him. Or hello to us. So big it rocked the boat! I’m not a spiritual guy, but...”

Mendez hears a slight tremble in Kevin Elder’s usually sharp, forceful voice.

“That must have been something,” she says. “The whale breaching.”

“The fluke looked thirty feet across, I swear.”

Mendez takes a moment to imagine it. She’s seen humpbacked whales breach, but never a big gray.

“Why not let Gale hear this?” she asks.

“I wanted you to know first. Like, a scoop for you.”

“I don’t quite believe that.”

“I wanted an excuse to see you alone. As I would like to again, in the future.”

Mendez is flummoxed by this. She really hasn’t seen it coming. Wonders if Elder knows how superior, in-control, and staged he comes off to her.

His usual.

“What a nice surprise,” she says.

“Oh?”

“I’m not sure what to say.”

“Well, you haven’t laughed at me. I take that as a positive.”

Mendez studies Elder’s handsome face, his eyes, the silver widow’s peak in his head of black hair. The damned suspenders.

She looks away.

Then a long but oddly pleasant silence.

“I’ve got seventh-row Plácido Domingo tickets for tomorrow at Segerstrom. Il Fornaio is close. Be me and two good friends. High school crushes, now two sons and a daughter. You’d like them. I’ll send a car for you at six thirty. Take you right to the restaurant.”

Mendez shakes her head. “No.”

She sees his disappointment.

“Why not?”

“I’m taken.”

“By someone very lucky.”

“Two of them, actually,” she says. A true alibi.

Elder raises his eyebrows.

“Not like that,” says Mendez.

“How about just friends? Coffee or a walk on the beach?”

“Not at this time, thank you.”

Elder bores into her with clear, good-humored eyes.

Mendez feels a tear forming in her right eye, wills it away.

Elder watches without reaction.

“Changing your mind?”

“I need to go,” she says.

Elder flags John Velasquez, who flags their waiter, who is at the booth forthwith.

At dusk, driving west fast for home on the Route 73 toll road, Mendez calls Tim.

With the call playing through the Explorer’s speakers, she keeps her eyes on the road, and the golden fall foothills scroll past in her periphery.

“Bless me, Father Timothy, for I have sinned.”

“This is not necessary, Daniela.”

His beautiful, judgmental baritone.

“Then what is necessary, Tim?”

“I hear your anger.”

“Yes, you do.”

Daniela gooses the SUV up to eighty on the toll road. Lets a moment go by.

“Tim, I want to ask you again.”

“What you’ve been asking for, all his life.”

“Since before, even.”

“I can’t do that,” says Father Malone. “It would damage him, and you, and destroy my standing in the Diocese. From before his birth I told you this, Dani, and you agreed with me because you knew it was right. And we proceeded together down this very difficult path. The three of us. Separate but bound together by God.”

“I’ve asked you a thousand times to do it privately. Just us three. Not to the Church of the Holy Martyr. Not your career. Not the family or friends. We three will keep our secret.”

“Daniela, I’ve always listened to your pain and told you what we need to do. For yourself, and Jesse, and for me.”

“He needs you now.”

“No, Daniela, he needs to return to the Church, as do you. Not to the Martyr, of course, but your parish in Orange—”

“They’re drawing him in, Tim. Lulu and the Barrio Dogtown gang. I’m watching it happen. I’m losing him.”

“Be firm, Daniela. Trust in God.”

“He needs more than God and me and the web of lies I’ve spun for him. He needs his church. He’ll need Azusa Catholic College next year. He needs to understand who he is and where he has come from. He needs you. Jesse is half you, Tim. Half yours. You are half responsible for creating him.”

“Oh, more, Dani. More than that. The credit, and the blame, are more than half mine.”

Daniela sees that she’s gliding along at ninety miles an hour now, steps off the gas, and feels the vehicle sag. Like her heart.

“Can’t you see how he needs you?” she asks. “It would be a new beginning of his life. To know you. Give him yourself, Tim. Become the man I loved and still love. He’s your only son.”

“Destroy my life’s work?” he asks, his powerful voice gentle now. “My parish and college? My nomination to bishop? My whole self?”

“It would damage your temporary body. Not your eternal soul. As you teach.”

She glances out at the hills and beyond to the mountains. Thinks of wildfires and the picture of Gomorrah in her childhood Bible companion, wonders if the Killer Cat is out there, wonders if Bennet Tarlow III had once loved his stepmother, then hated her for what she did to him. Both? Wonders how Jesse would feel about her, if she ever got Tim to accept her ancient request.

“I love you, Daniela,” he says, his voice still soft.

“And I love you, Tim. Even more than when I was seven and I thought you were God. I love the man you are. Please open your arms to Jesse.”

“My destruction.”

“Your son. Jesus has already forgiven you. And the world will forgive you someday.”

“My soul aches, as always,” says Tim.

“It aches for Jesse.”

“Yes. And selfishly, for what would be my destruction.”

“Rebirth.”

“Oh. Oh...”

In the rearview mirror Daniela sees the Highway Patrol SUV in her lane, coming up fast. Notes that she’s doing thirty-five now on the sixty-five-mile-an-hour toll road.

The lights come and the siren whoops and she pulls over.

“Dani? A siren?”

“I’m muting you. Don’t hang up.”

“I will never hang up on you.”

Daniela rolls to a stop and lowers her window. Beholds a highway patrolman from central casting: muscles in a tailored uniform, a brisk haircut, and Ray-Bans.

She hands the patrolman her badge and ID and he hands it back.

“Going a little fast back there, Deputy,” he says. “And awful slow up here.”

“I know.”

“Everything okay?”

“Just talking to my boss on the speaker.”

“Well then, drive carefully and have a good day.”

“You, too.”

Seconds later she’s back in the right lane, setting sixty-five on the cruise control.

The patrolman blows by in the fast lane.

“I’m back, Tim,” she says.

“Trouble?”

“Highway Patrol. It’s cool.”

“I have been thinking about what you’re asking since before he was born,” he says. “It is the central conflict of my life. It always has been. I will continue to think and pray. I will consult the Lord, as always.”

“I wish you loved us as much as you love God,” says Daniela. “And loved who you are to him. Let this cook.”

“Cook?”

“You know, let things play out. My partner Gale always says that.”

“Okay, Dani. I promise to let it cook.”