Dark Horse

15.



Sanchez and I were in the backroom of the Kwik Mart on Eighth and Turner. We had convinced the reluctant owner, a small Vietnamese man named Phan, to allow us to review his security tapes on the night of Amanda's murder. We informed him that he had sold alcohol to a minor, and that we could prove it, but in exchange for his cooperation, he would receive only a warning. He obliged.



When Phan was done setting up the VCR, he handed me the remote control. The store owner left us alone, mumbling under his breath.



"You speak Vietnamese?" asked Sanchez.



"Nope."



"What's the chances he's praising us for our diligent investigative work?"



"Slim to none."



We both leaned back in a worn leather love seat, the only seating available in the back room.



"Just because we're in a love seat," said Sanchez, "doesn't mean I love you."



"Sure you do," I said. "You just don't know it yet."



I had the remote control and was fast forwarding through the day of her murder. In the bottom right corner was the time.



At seven thirty I let the tape play in real time. Sanchez put his hands behind his head and stretched.



"Should have brought some popcorn," he said.



"They have some in the store. I think Phuong might be inclined to give us some on the house."



"His name was Phan, and that would be abuse of power. We would be on the take."



"For some popcorn, it would be worth it."



"But only if buttered."



We watched the comings and goings of many different people of many different nationalities, most of them buying cigarettes and Lotto tickets, all slapping their money down on the counter. The camera angled down from over the clerk's shoulder, giving us a clear shot of each customer's face.



"Oh, she's cute," said Sanchez.



"The brunette?"



"No, the blond."



"What is it with you and brunettes, anyway?" he asked.



"Brunettes are beautiful. Blonds are pretty. There's a difference."



"You're blond."



"There always an exception to every rule."



At seven thirty-eight a young man approached the counter carrying two cases of Miller Genuine Draft. Tall and lanky. The owner studied him carefully, then shrugged, and took the kid's money.



"That our boy?" asked Sanchez.



"Yes."



"The time of death was seven thirty?"



"Yes," I said.



"Kid can't be in two places at once."



"No," I said.



"The kid didn't do her."



"No, he didn't."



I stopped the tape and we sat back on the sofa.



"Which means someone was waiting for her at her house," I said. "So how did this someone know Amanda would be leaving the party early?"



We were silent. Two great investigative minds at work.



"Don't know," said Sanchez.



"Me neither," I said.



"Maybe she was followed home."



"Or just a random killing."



Sanchez looked at me and grinned. "Seems like you've got your work cut out for you, kiddo."



16.



It was a late April morning in Huntington Beach, California, which meant, of course, that the weather was perfect.



Why the hell would anyone want to live anywhere else?



I was sitting at my desk, reviewing a sampling of the San Diego Chargers playbook, a sampling that Rob, Cindy's brother, had just faxed to me. Rob let it be known that this was Highly Classified material, and that his job was on the line. I reminded him that I was boffing his sister, and that practically made me family. He told me that he never wanted to hear the words boffing and his sister in the same sentence again and that he was going to get drunk at our wedding and make a nuisance of himself. I told him there would be no wedding because his sister wasn't marriage material. He told me to fuck off, and hung up.



The plays were complex, but not rocket science. The majority faxed to me involved the fullback position, which was my position. I studied them with interest, making my own notes along the borders.



And that's when the guy with the gun showed up.



* * *



I heard the door open, and when I looked up the Browning 9mm was pointed at my head. I hate when that happens.



"Can I help you?" I asked.



"Shut the hell up, fuck nut."



"Fuck nut. The one nut Home Depot doesn't carry."



The man was probably in his fifties, gray hair sleeked back with a lot of gel. He wore a gold hoop in his left ear, pirate-like. Indeed, in his misspent youth he probably always wanted to be a pirate or a buccaneer, only I didn't really know the difference between the two. Had it been fashionable, he would have worn a patch over his eye. His face, all in all, was hideous, heavily pock-marked, sunken and sallow. The gun never wavered from my face.



"What's the difference between a pirate and a buccaneer?" I asked.



"Shut the fuck up."



"I don't know either. Nothing to be ashamed of."



His eyes, for all intents and purposes, were dead. Lifeless. Lacking sympathy, compassion, or caring. The eyes of a killer, rapist, suicidal bomber, genocidal dictator. His eyes made me nervous, to say the least. Eyes like that were capable of anything. Anything. They kill your family, your babies, your children, your husbands and wives. I only knew one other man who had eyes like that, and he was my father.



The Browning never wavered from my face. "You're working on a case," the man said.



"I'm working on a few cases. It's what I do. See that filing cabinet behind me, it's full of pending cases. The shelf on the bottom is full of my closed cases."



There was a heavy silence.



"You're going to call me a fuck nut again aren't you?" I said. "It feels like a fuck nut moment, doesn't it?"



He pulled the trigger. My ear exploded with pain. I tried not to flinch, although I might have, dammit. If he had chosen that moment to call me a fuck nut I might have missed it...due to the excessive ringing in my head.



The bullet had punctured a picture frame behind me. I heard the glass tinkling down. I did not know yet which picture it had been, although it would have been one of the featured articles about yours truly.



That's when I felt something drip onto my shoulder. I touched my ear. Blood. The bullet grazed my lobe.



"You shot me," I said.



"We want you off the Derrick Booker case," he said. "Or the next shot won't miss."



"But you didn't miss. You shot my earlobe. Get it straight."



"I heard you would be a smart ass."



"Sometimes I am a smart ass. Now I'm just pissed. You shot me."



"We meet again and I kill you."



"You shot me," I said. "We meet again and I owe you one."



He grinned and proceeded to shoot out five or six framed pictures behind me. I didn't move. The cacophony of tinkling glass and resounding gunshots filled my head and office.



He pointed the gun at my forehead and said, "Bang, fuck nut."



He backed out of my office and shut the door.



And I went back to my playbook. My ears were ringing and my earlobe stung.



The fuck nut.



17.



On the way home from the office I stopped by the local liquor store and bought a bottle of Scotch and some Oreos. The Scotch was for getting drunk, and the Oreos were for gaining weight. At two-hundred and ten pounds I was still too small for an NFL fullback.



Cindy was away tonight at UC Santa Barbara's School of Anthropology giving a guest lecture on what it means to be human.



Hell, he thought, I could have saved everyone a trip out to Santa Barbara. Being human meant walking into any liquor store from here to Nantucket and buying a bottle of Scotch and a bag of Oreos. Let's see the chimps pull that one off.



Cindy Darwin was a favorite on the guest lecture circuit. Any anthropology department worth their salt wanted Cindy Darwin's ruminations on the subject of evolution. Really, she was their messiah, their prophet and savior.



She had wanted me to come with her up the coast, but I had declined, stating there were some leads I needed to follow.



Which was bullshit, really. True I had made a few phone calls prior to leaving the office, but I could have done those on my cell. I wasn't proud that I had fibbed to the love of my life. The only lead I needed to follow was my nose to the scotch and Oreos.



Cindy did not know the extent of my drinking. And if it meant fibbing to keep it that way, then fine. I drank alone and in my apartment. I harmed no one but myself and my liver.



I lived in a five story yellow stucco apartment building that sat on the edge of the Pacific Coast Highway, and overlooked Huntington State Beach. I parked in my allotted spot, narrowly missing the wooden pole that separated my spot from the car next to mine. And for training purposes only, I hauled my ass up five flights of stairs. The bag of Oreos and the bottle of scotch were heavy on my mind.



Those, and the prick who took a pot shot at my earlobe.



Inside my apartment, surrounded by shelves of paperback thrillers and my own rudimentary artwork, I tossed my keys and wallet next to the stove, grabbed my secret stash of cigarettes and pulled up a chair on my balcony.



I had a wonderful view. And should probably be paying a lot more for this apartment, but the landlord was a Bruin fan and he appreciated my efforts to beat SC through the years. So he gave me a hell of a deal, and in return he often showed up at my apartment to drink and relive the glory days. I didn't mind reliving the glory days. The glory days were all I had.



Now I hoped to make new glory days with the Chargers.



We'll see.



I opened the bag of Oreos and commenced my training, bulking up with one Oreo after another. I washed them down with swigs from the bottle of scotch, as a real man should.



When I was tired of the Oreos, after about the thirtieth, I took out a cigarette and tried like hell to give myself lung cancer.



I watched the ocean. Flat and black in the night. The lights of Catalina twinkled beyond a low haze. Further out the lights of a half dozen oil rigs blinked. And somewhere below the water was a cold world filled with life. The secret world, where sharks ate seals, where manta rays glided, where whales sang their beautiful songs.



Sometimes I wanted to jump into that cold world and never emerge, especially after the destruction of my leg.



That's when the drinking began. Few knew about my drinking. I did it alone and I did it hard, and I did it until I could drink no more. Until I could forget what was stolen from me by one fluke play by a son-of-a-bitch who chop blocked me.



My goddamn leg had been throbbing ever since Sanchez and I had been running sprints every morning for the past week. I was a step slower. I could feel it within me. Sluggish. Maybe too slow for the NFL.



And I had a goddamn kid in jail for murder one. And he was innocent. Because if he was guilty the asshole with the slicked back gray hair would not have felt it necessary to pierce my ear with a 9mm.



I had to stop drinking. I had to reclaim what was mine. And the smoking didn't help, either.



But on this night I continued to drink. And smoke. And eat the Oreos. Gluttony at its fucking worst.



The lights continued to blink on the ocean.



The night was slipping away with each swallow from the bottle and hit from the cigarette. I heard music and voices coming from Main Street below my apartment. Lots of laughter.



I didn't feel like laughing.