San Diego Noir

The living room looked exactly as it had two nights ago, except that the beer cans were gone and the pile of black binders had been reduced to just one. In the small back bedroom the stroller was still in place and the plastic doll was snugged down under the blanket just as it had been. I went into the master bedroom. The mattress was bare and the chest of drawers stood open and nearly empty. It looked like Farrel had stripped the bed and packed her clothes in a hurry. The bathroom was stripped too: no towels, nothing in the shower or the medicine chest or on the sink counter. The refrigerator had milk and pickles and that was all. The wastebasket under the sink had empty beer cans, an empty pretzel bag, various fast-food remnants swathed in ketchup, a receipt from a supermarket, and a wadded-up agreement from Rent-a-Dream car rentals down by the airport. Black Beamer 750i, of course.

Back in the living room I took the black binder from the coffee table and opened it to the first page:

THE SOPRANOS

Season Four/Episode Three

I flipped through the pages. Dialogue and brief descriptions. Four episodes in all.

Getting Sal’s lines right, I thought.

Vic didn’t show up for work for three straight nights. I stopped by Skin a couple of times a night, just in case he showed, and I knocked on his hotel room door twice a day or so. The manager hadn’t seen him in four days. He told me Vic’s rent was due on the first.

Of course Farrel had vanished too. I cruised her place in La Mesa but something about it just said she wasn’t coming back, and she didn’t.

On the fourth afternoon after the murder of Joey Morra, Vic called me on my cell phone. “Can you feed my scorpion? Give him six crickets. They’re under the bathroom sink. The manager’ll give you the key.”

“Sure. But we need to talk, Vic—face to face.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Who else could throw Joey up there like that?”

Vic didn’t answer.

“Dom and his people are looking for you, Vic. You won’t get a trial with them. You’ll just get your sentence, and it won’t be lenient.”

“I only took what she needed.”

“And killed Joey.”

“He pulled a gun, Robbie. I couldn’t thinka what else to do. I bear-hugged and shook him. Like a reflex. Like when I threw you.”

“I’ll see you outside Higher Grounds in ten minutes.”

“She met me at Rainwater’s, Robbie. I walked into Rainwater’s and there she was—that beautiful young woman, waiting there for me. You should have seen her face light up when I gave her the money. Out in the parking lot, I mean.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. “Meet me outside Higher Grounds in ten minutes.”

“Naw. I got a good safe place here. I’m going to just enjoy myself for a couple more days, knowing I did a good thing for a good woman. My scorpion, I named him Rudy. Oh. Oh shit, Robbie.”

Even coming from a satellite orbiting the earth in space, and through the miles of ether it took to travel to my ear, the sound of the shotgun blast was unmistakable. So was the second blast, and the third.

A few days later I flew to Little Rock and rented a car, then made the drive north and west to Center Springs. Farrel was right: it wasn’t on the rental-car company driving map, but it made the navigation unit that came in the vehicle.

The Ozarks were steep and thickly forested and the Arkansas River looked unhurried. I could see thin wisps of wood stove fires burning in cabins down in the hollows and there was a smoky cast to the sky.

The gas station clerk said I’d find Farrel White’s dad’s place down the road a mile, just before Persimmon Holler. He said there was a batch of trailers up on the hillside and I’d see them from the road if I didn’t drive too fast. Billy White had the wooden one with all the satellite dishes on top.

The road leading in was dirt and heavily rutted from last season’s rain. I drove past travel trailers set up on cinder blocks. They were slouched and sun-dulled and some had decks and others just had more cinder blocks as steps. Dogs eyed me without bothering to sit up. There were cats and litter and a pile of engine blocks outside, looked like they’d been cast there by some huge child.

Billy answered my knock with a sudden yank on the door then studied me through the screen. He was mid-fifties and heavy, didn’t look at all like his daughter. He wore a green-andblack plaid jacket buttoned all the way to the top.

“I’m a San Diego cop looking for your daughter. I thought she might have come home.”

“Would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Come home to this from San Diego?”

“Well.”

“She okay?”

“I think so.”

“Come in.”

The trailer was small and cramped and packed with old, overstuffed furniture.

“She in trouble?”

“Farrel and her boyfriend hustled a guy out of some money. But he had to take the money from someone else.”

Billy handed me a beer and plopped into a vinyl recliner across from me. He had a round, impish face and a twinkle in his eyes. “That ain’t her boyfriend. It’s her brother.”

“That never crossed my mind.”