FATHER'S DAY - NOVEL - EPISODE THREE

Hey Blogsphere Folks: Father's Day - the novel - is the source material for the feature film being produced by my production company. Hope you enjoy reading Earl's story.
...And please check out the exciting trailer - starring the amazing John Billlingsley (Star Trek, 2012, Hawaii Five-O) for the film HERE

FATHER’S DAY

Written by: James M. Russell

Copyright 2015© James M. Russell

CHAPTER 18

The cramped foyer of 2451 Arlington Avenue was clean, ordered, and unchanged for decades.

The keys for Ole Grand sat nestled in a blue-and-cream-colored ceramic bowl, a souvenir from the summer of '81 when Earl, Wanda, and Ian visited Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and Death Valley National Park. The bowl sat atop a mail order, pine table that once belonged to Wanda's grandmother. And the table stood on a small, blue-green, hand-woven Persian rug, a wedding present from Earl's parents, that covered a small corner of the dark green linoleum floor.

From its perch on the north wall, the ever-vigilant cuckoo watched and listened as weak footsteps materialized in the distance, approached the door, then stopped.

Ian rummaged through his pockets for the shiny key that, unbeknownst to him, now rested in thirty feet of ocean.

“Fuck!” Ian muttered, then slowly, painfully, shuffled around the side of the house. With each movement, his arms and legs fighting against the still damp clothes hat clung to his limbs. It took him nearly three hours to get home -- normally a bus ride of fifty-five minutes -- but public transit didn’t run at night: too expensive for the car-loving tax payers and too dangerous for the underpaid bus drivers. So, Ian piggy-backed all the way. Clinging to the back of panel vans and delivery trucks until one finally came close enough to home that he could walk the rest of the way. None of the drivers knew they had an unauthorized rider; he always got on and off in their blind spot.

Once Ian reached the north side of his house, he pressed his bloody palm against the family room window and pushed up, but the latch held tight. Then, with a familiarity born of practice, he pulled away a section of the wood trim from the left side of the window and from beneath it removed a rusty, six-inch section of a coat hanger. Ian inserted the wire between the windows, flipped the lock open then returned the tool to its hiding place and climbed in through the open window. Once inside, he pulled several sheets of facial tissue from the box on the mantle and used them to wipe his blood off the glass, frame and wall.

Ian reached the top landing of the stairs silently, and without pausing, hurried past his parent’s open bedroom door and into the washroom, only to emerge, moments later, carrying a metal, industrial-sized first aid box.

Once in the sanctuary of his room, he gently closed the door behind him.

CHAPTER 19

The concrete block fences, walls really, to the north and south of the twenty by twenty-two plot of Mother Earth behind the Timmins’s home were exactly seven feet high. The Morrises on the north and the Peters on the south, neither of whom talked to each other, both checked the bylaws before they went ahead and hired their separate contractors. They would have built the fences taller, but the city wouldn’t allow it.

The sad state of neighborhood affairs, like the walls, came about only recently.

In fact, the Morris’s and Peters used to be friends, to each other and to Earl and Wanda. The three families used to take turns having backyard barbeques, shared tools, had the same company install lawn sprinkler systems. A year or two before the walls went up, Leonard Peter’s had even talked the membership chair of his golf club into giving Earl a trial membership. Leonard couldn’t have imagined a finer fellow or better golf partner than Earl, all Leonard had to do was teach Earl how to play.

Relations between the three neighbors got worse as Ian got older and his fascination with flame grew. It wasn’t until the Morris’s tool shed burnt down in a mysterious fire that the Timmins’s two neighbors stopping coming over for visits, or calling, or even returning Earl and Wanda’s calls. When Sheila Peter’s caught Ian peeking in their bedroom window, the Morris’s and Peters knew what they had to do.

Everyone in the neighborhood knew that Earl and Wanda left their house at exactly 10:30 every Saturday morning to go shopping so it wasn’t hard for the Morris’s and Peters to ambush Earl and Wanda. It was Sheila who handed Wanda their twenty-six-word petition, although the actual word they had used at the top of the sheet was ‘request’.

Wanda read the ‘request’ silently then handed it to Earl who read it once, then a second time. Earl was livid, but he tried not to show it, instead he folded the sheet neatly, slid it into his back pocket then motioned in a gentlemanly manner for his red-faced wife to get into Ole Grand and they drove off.

Their conversation on the way to the grocery story consisted not of complete sentences but short protestations and expressions of outrage like, “How dare they!”, “Overreacting!”, “Blown way out of proportion!”, “Fightin’ mad!”, “Who are they to…”

For nearly a week, those words and phrases dominated Wanda’s conversation - rants actually. Seemed like it was all she could talk about and probably all she thought about..

A couple of weeks later he had to rush Wanda to the hospital because she was having chest pains. Turned out that it was only acid reflux.

Wanda never mentioned the ‘request’ or the names of their two neighbors ever again, but he could see the anger in her eyes every time, she spotted the Morris’s or Peters at the supermarket, or movie theatre, or in their yard.

Earl wasn’t mad that their good friends had asked them to move out of the neighborhood. They had just as much right to ask as he and Wanda had the right to refuse. No, Earl wasn’t mad, just sad. 

It was on a Thursday that different contractors came out and put up the Morris’s and Peters’s concrete wall. It didn’t take the work crews long, but Earl figured that the walls, seven feet high and stretching from the face of their house to their back property line, must have cost a pretty penny.

Earl and Wanda lost all their tomato plants and most of their string beans that year, all dead from lack of sunlight.

After Ian was sent to prison not only did the neighborhood sigh with relief, both the Morrises and the Peters briefly considered tearing down their respective walls, which even they hated.  But they didn’t.

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Just before next planting season Earl and Wanda’s had several discussions with Simon, the ‘garden expert’ at the Home Depot on Sepulveda about their lack of sunlight problem. They even brought him a sample of their backyard soil. Together they three of them decided to plant sun-loving pole beans and carrots, smack in the middle of the backyard, where they would be safe from the shadow cast by the Morris’s and Peter’s walls. And plant potatoes and peppers against either wall because they needed less sun. The weeds, however, weren't particular, they grew anywhere.

“Look at the size of this guy!”

“Leave it, Earl, it looks kind of pretty.”

Earl's gloved hand jerked the spindly weed from the ground and tossed it into the five-gallon plastic ice cream bucket he and Wanda used for yard waste.

“A weed is a weed, nothing pretty about it.”

“Sometime plants that look like weeds can have medicinal value.”

“Wanda Timmins, you suggestin' we rip out the garden and plant that marywana stuff?”

Wanda burst out laughing: that girlish laugh that Earl always loved.

“Oh, you silly man!”

Earl and Wanda fell silent, with Earl continuing to weed while Wanda pruned and caressed.

“Ian up?”

“No. Not yet. It's Saturday...let him sleep. Bunch of you probably worked him to death at that job site.”

“We were supposed to go fishing this morning. Guess we can always go next weekend if the weather holds…shopping regular time today?”

"Yes indeedy. Remind me to pick up some more lettuce. Head I got last week went bad before I even noticed."

Earl reached down and picked up his glass from its perch atop his gardening stool then paused. "Mind if I add a little water? Stuff's so thick it feels like I'm drinking blood."

Wanda was used to Earl complaining about the vegetable juice.

"Water, yes. Salt, no."

Earl struggled to his feet and hurried off only to return moments later - the contents of his glass having increased in volume and decreased in hue. He took a sip then returned the glass to its perch.

They worked in silence for another half hour before Wanda asked, “Ian say which movie he was going to see?” then plucking a green grape from the bowl set between them and popped it into her mouth.

Earl sat back down and took a long drink of his diluted concoction.

“Nope.”

“You take your medicine this morning?”

“Yep.”

“Supposed to rain tomorrow?”

“Nope”

“You ready for breakfast?”

“Yep.”

“Oh Earl Timmins, will you shut up and stop talking so much. My heavens you've turned into a real chatterbox in your old age.”

“What'd I say?”

Then Earl began to laugh and laugh. Wanda tried to maintain a straight face for as long as she could then began also laughing, nearly swallowing her grape whole.

Earl stopped laughing when he noticed yet another weed, this one nestled between two healthy potato vines.

“These things just seem to pop outta nowhere,” he said as he plucked it from the soft ground then resumed searching.

Wanda pulled a couple more dead leaves off the carrot stalk then looked up at the baby blue sky.

“That's two weeks in a row we've gone without a speck of rain. Don't remember such a dry spring. You?”

“No. Can't say I have.”

Earl abandoned his search for a moment and watched Wanda pluck and prune.

“I ever tell you that you're the best damn gardener in the whole world?”

Wanda grimaced with embarrassment then smiled.

“No. Never in those exact words so watch your mouth.”

Earl studied the tray of six fledgling plants at Wanda's side.

“Those beans should grow real good.”

“Uh huh..”

“Baby, You think Ian’s gonna be all right?”

“Of course he will Earl, people just need to leave him alone. You know as well as I that our Ian would never have set that fire or done what he did if it hadn't been for that pack of wild kids he was running wi...”

“You remember the year Ian planted his own vegetable garden? Carrots and beets wasn't it?”

“Carrots and beets,’ Wanda said as she gestured toward the middle of the Morris’s fence. "Right over there.”

“Gosh, he was proud of that garden. And, he did a fine job. Not easy getting vegetables to grow from seeds. Those were the best tasting beets ever.”

“They certainly were Earl. They certainly were.”

Wanda used the wooden handled trowel to scoop out a hole in the ground, set one of the seedlings into the crater, then caressed the rich soil into place around it.

“No use trying to hide! You dastardly weeds. I'll find you!”

Wanda smiled at the sight of her husband, on his knees in the dirt, talking to himself, just like he did in that senior year play, about that crazy man dressed in armor. What was the name of that play? she asked herself.

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It was in January, near the middle of Wanda’s last year at Torrance High School, when her Drama 401 teacher, Mr. Trunch, decided that they were going to perform the Wizard of Oz at the summer holiday concert. All the girls, of course, wanted to play Dorothy or the Wicked Witch of the East. Not Wanda though, she thought the Judy Garland movie was stupid and figured that the stage version wouldn’t be much better, so she quickly volunteered to be part of the stage crew. As it turned out, on the morning of the big performance, Eleanor Penn, who was to play the Mayor of Munchkinland, got the stomach flu and Wanda ended up with roles in front of and behind the stage curtain.

    Earl and Wanda had only been dating for about three weeks but Earl still volunteered to spend his entire lunch period on opening day, and an hour or two before the play, helping Wanda memorise her lines.

Wanda despised public speaking, so naturally the thought of standing on a raised platform where everyone could see her and reciting a bunch of words was unappealing. “Your own fault for taking drama,” she said to herself when she learned of her casting call. She could have taken auto shop just as easily. Both were electives. But Wanda knew her friends would never let her live it down if she took a guy’s class like auto shop. Plus, when she applied next year to Mrs. Fireworth’s Secretary School for Girls, Drama 401 would look a heck of a lot better on her high school transcript than Fundamentals of the Internal Combustion Engine.

Thank goodness the Mayor of Munchkinland didn’t have many lines because Wanda even had trouble saying Munchkinland without bursting out laughing. A reflex that made the process of memorizing the rest of her dialogue even more difficult.

Earl, who was something of a stage veteran, having played the lead role of the crazy man with the funny hat in last year’s play, told her more than once, “Just keep repeating it over and over in your mind then, when you get on stage, relax. It will come.”

After school, and just hours before the curtain opened, Earl found a quiet corner of the school library and together they wrote out all her lines on index cards. One sentence per card. Earl held them up, one at a time, in sequence. If she missed one, they went back to the beginning until she was able to pretty well recite the whole pile, with a little help here and there.

After the play, he bought Wanda a chocolate malt at Foster’s Freeze to help her calm down and forget the embarrassment of fudging more than one or two of her lines, including the word ‘Munchkinland’, which, to this day, she still can’t pronounce.

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Wanda was still staring at Earl digging in the garden when the name Don Quixote just popped into her head. That was the name of the crazy man Earl played.

CHAPTER 20

“Fuck you guys!...fuck you guys!,” Ian repeated over and over, but not too loudly in case his mother or father passed his bedroom door. He wanted them to think that he was still asleep, but there was no way he could. His whole body hurt like hell. And between the spasms of pain there was rage.

    It took Ian nearly an hour and a half to bandage himself. The head wound was the hardest to cover because he couldn't see the gash below his right ear and partially behind his head. But he could feel the cut and the thick, warm liquid that still oozed from it. The dog did the most damage though. Its teeth ripped deep coin-sized pieces of Ian’s skin from his forearm and chest. Distorted by ugly, purple welts and zigzag lacerations, Ian didn't even recognize the skull tattoo on his upper left arm. He poured witch-hazel on everything then bandaged what he could. If he had gone to emergency, they would have called the cops so he had no choice but to do his own doctoring.

Within a couple hours, the bleeding had pretty well stopped so he decided to lay down. But despite his fatigue, he never got more than a few minute’s sleep here and there. At first he tried lying on his bed but the throbbing in his head was unbearable. The easy chair by the window was more comfortable, but his arms were a problem. They only hurt a little if he held them in the air, something he couldn't do for more than five or so minutes before his shoulders got tired. Laying his arms on the chair's padded arms sent bolts of searing pain up through his neck and across his back. He finally compromised by clasping his hand under his chin and resting his elbows on the chair's padded arms. He remained that way for hours, drifting in and out of sleep. From the relative comfort of his armchair, he heard everything. His parents getting out of bed, then taking turns in the bathroom, then having breakfast in the kitchen. He even heard the back door bang shut when they went out into the backyard to work in the garden.

Years ago he told them that gardening was a stupid waste of time, but they didn’t listen, they never listened.

    By 9:30, Ian's restlessness had peaked and he desperately wanted out of his room, but he knew that his parents would freak if they saw how banged up he was, so he just paced, back and forth. It wasn’t the freaking part that he really cared about, it was the questions. Questions he couldn't answer -- honestly anyway, so it was better if they didn't even get the opportunity to ask them. And so he stayed in his room and waited.

Ian knew that that his parents always left at exactly 10:30 to do their weekly shopping and it was 10:03. He could wait another twenty-seven minutes. He waited nearly four years in that hellhole they called a correctional facility.

So, Ian McCarthy Timmins eased his battered and bruised body back into the chair and planned what he was going to do to those “fuckin’ kids who jumped me.” 

21:

Officially, it was still spring but Wanda decided to wear her tan and white gingham summer dress anyway. Earl always said that it made her look ten years younger. Standing in front of the full-length mirror fixed to their bedroom closet door, she figured it took off at least three years, maybe four.

My gosh, how she loved summer.

The glorious sun. The flowers. Fresh vegetables. Cup of tea in the backyard.

The winter had been especially nasty. Rain, rain and more rain. By the time spring came, the sky had no more tears and Southern California was plunged into its worse drought in years, according to the newspaper.

Wanda decided to wear her white Keds sneakers because they were good for walking. And a trip to Bellamy’s was certainly a “walking experience,” in Earl words. Neither she nor Earl understood why in the world Bellamy’s decided to remodel. It was perfectly good in the first place. Instead, she and Earl had to put up with six months of dust and disruption and plastic sheeting.

“It’s so big somebody could land a jumbo jet in there without knocking a single can off the shelf!,” she said to the store’s new manager, Jimi Hernandez, who looked like he was going to cry after a few minutes of Wanda ‘speaking her mind’. Earl finally managed to save poor Jimi by distracting his wife with a question about lettuce.

----------

Wanda twirled gracefully in front of the mirror, taking one last look at herself in the dress, then picked up her purse and hurried toward the bedroom door. She couldn't wait to show Earl.

She walked barefooted along the hallway to the staircase, giving only a passing thought to knocking on Ian's bedroom door.

----------

Earl couldn't see any movement in Ian's window. Or light. Or anything. Just the lime green curtains he helped Wanda put up two weeks ago to replace the old ones that had faded after hanging there since before Ian went to prison.

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Wanda glanced at the clock on the family room mantle as she descended the last steps into the foyer. “Ten-thirty on the button,” she murmured to herself as she grabbed the polished brass knob and pulled open the door. Earl was, of course, already standing beside Ole Grand, holding the passenger door open for her. Earl Timmins was a gentleman from day one and hadn’t changed a bit. Holding her chair, helping her on with her coat, walking on the street side to protect her from the mud thrown up by passing horse-drawn carriages.

Her mother said it wouldn't last.

"They're always nice until they get into your pants," Wanda remembered her mother insisting on more than one occasion. Momma had a filthy mouth up to the day she died and Wanda was surprised that Daddy had put up with it for so many years. Fifty-nine to be exact. Clarence McCarthy Epson was always a gentleman, although her father did sometimes slip up a bit when he had too much to drink, which wasn't often, but still too often for Wanda's liking. Wanda hated alcohol and drinking and drunks though she never mentioned that to Earl, not when they first met and not since. Actually, he was the first to bring up the subject. They were walking up the path that led to Taylor Simpson’s front door. It was Taylor’s nineteenth birthday and the first party that she and Earl had been to as a couple. Or at least the first one that offered drinking and dancing.

"Guess I'd better warn you that I’ve never touched alcohol and don't plan to start."

"Good!"

And that was the end of Earl’s disclosure session, although he also should have warned her about his unusual dancing style because after spending the night watching Earl gyrate around the dance floor, bumping into this and knocking over that, she was sure that it would be the last party anyone would invite them to.

---------

As Wanda stepped out into the sunshine, Earl's eyes lit up like one of those Burning School Houses on the Fourth of July.

"Excuse me young lady, have you seen my wife?”

"Oh Earl! It's the same ole dress I wore last month. Stop making such a fuss!"

Wanda glided in through the open car door and sat, but instead of shutting the door Earl just stood there staring. It didn’t take Wanda long to notice.

"Earl Timmins! Get in. Drive. You know what that place is like if we get there too late."

Earl gave Wanda a mock salute then hurried around the front of Ole Grand and sat behind the wheel. He eased the key into the ignition, started up the engine, wrestled the reluctant gear lever into reverse, then paused.

"I ever tell you that you look ten years younger in that ole dress."

Wanda struggled to fight back the smile.

"Once or twice. Now drive!"

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Ian heard the front door slam right at eleven and the car engine start a minute or so later. Carefully, he forced his stiff legs to stand then watched through a crack in the drapes as his father backed that Ole Grand into the street and drove away.

    Ian jerked open his door and headed down the hall, food was first on his list.

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Earl drove along Crenshaw, or more accurately, crept along Crenshaw, while Wanda went over her grocery list. Roadwork had slowed traffic to a crawl and what was usually an eighteen-minute trip had, by then, taken half an hour, and they were still three blocks away.

Jose Feliciano’s version of the Doors’ "Light My Fire" had just ended. An annoying flourish of trumpets signaled the beginning of the news.

“And now, on the station that gives you the news at the top and the bottom of the hour, the KTKA eleven o’clock news of the Southland.”

Earl and Wanda usually didn't bother to change the dial when the news came on. It never lasted for more than a minute, so they put up with the twice-hourly menu of crime, traffic, city politics and celebrity foolishness.

“This is Ramone Gonsalves, KTKA news. The headlines: Russian immigrants arrive home safely...Dow Chemical bites the bullet...and arson claims the life of a Marina woman in a spectacular fire. Those are the headlines: the stories after this short message.”

Earl reached to turn up the volume, but Wanda was faster and switched off the radio.

"We have a few extra things on the grocery list this week,” she said with a Cheshire smile.

“Corn flakes?”

“Special things I said.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, like things for a big day that’s coming up soon.”

“You don't wanna listen to the news?"

“I have a bit of a headache. Must be all the exhaust.”

“We should be out of this mess in a couple of minutes,” Earl replied.

CHAPTER 21

Ian shoveled the last spoonful of corn flakes into his mouth then lifted the bowl to his lips and sucked up the sweetened milk at the bottom.

The kitchen table was littered with an empty quart container of milk, a blanket of spilled sugar granules, orange peels, and paper wrappers from three microwave apple pie pouches.

Ian stood awkwardly, knocking over the chair he was sitting in, then walked to the fridge and yanked it open. He removed two chicken legs with his right hand and four twelve-ounce bottles of root beer with his left. After a bite of chicken, he set the bottles into the sink and, one by one, removed their caps. He took three more bites of the first drumstick before tossing it on the counter then, clutching the second drumstick in his teeth, began emptying the fizzy, dark contents of the four bottles down the drain.

Ian muttered, “Fuckin' guys!” as he watched the root beer swirl around the drain, took two rapid bites of the second drumstick then tossed it into the sink and picked up the now empty bottles. On his way to the back door, he reached into the flour tin and pulled out a small roll of fives and tens, held neatly by a red elastic band, then opened the door and hurried out.

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Back in the twenties, garages were an accessory. Intended more for storage and workspace than parking. Not a lot of families had automobiles back then. The garage attached to 2451, like those of its neighbors came with a set of flimsy wooden doors that opened out. When Earl and Wanda bought the house in the 70s, it still had the original wooden doors, although, after more than fifty years of sun and moisture, they were in a pretty sorry shape. It only took Earl a weekend, a day and a half really, to remove the old doors and replace them with a single, overhead, aluminum one. A couple of years ago, Earl added an electric garage door opener. He had been saying for the longest time that he was going to knock a hole in the wall and install a door so that they could walk directly from the family room into the garage, but had never gotten around to it, and probably wouldn’t until he retired.

       Ian went out the kitchen door, into the yard and entered the garage through the back. He couldn’t raise the main door, there was only one remote and his parents had it in their car. The back route was better anyway, less chance of the nosey neighbors seeing him.

    Ian stepped into the semi-dark garage and walked confidently through the darkness to the workbench. His father always kept everything in its place so there wasn’t much risk of him tripping over anything. Ian’s hand went straight to the leather shoelace hanging from the overhead fluorescent light fixture. He pulled and immediately the bulb flickered then came on with a burst of light. The one fluorescent would be all he needed.

    The single car garage was neat and tidy, just as he remembered it. Nothing out of place, nothing that didn’t have a practical purpose, except that old pair of roller skates hanging on the back wall.

    The red gasoline can was where his father always stored it, on the wooden shelf directly above the lawnmower. Ian smiled when he picked it up and realized that his father had been kind enough to have recently filled it.

    Ian used a faded, green plastic funnel to fill the four root beer bottles nearly to the brim with the volatile pink liquid, then glanced about looking for, and finally finding, a rag which he tore into four, foot-long strips. He stuffed one ragged strip into each of the bottles. The gasoline immediately soaked through the thirsty flannel then began climbing the three or so inches of wick protruding above the bottle's necks. Ian held one of his four creations up to the light and smiled.

His father hadn't bowled in maybe twenty years so Ian didn't think that he would miss his green vinyl and tan canvas bowling bag. Ian found the jet-black, five-pin ball surprisingly heavy as he lifted it out and set it on the garage floor.

When Ian returned to the workbench, he noticed that the cloth wicks were now limp with, and one had even begun to leech gasoline down the side of the root beer bottle. He hadn't thought of that so he paused to consider possible solutions.

The thin cardboard box of aluminum foil was faded and dusty and there wasn't much left on the nine-inch roll, perhaps two feet, but that would be enough for Ian.

Impatiently, he tore off four jagged sections of the shiny aluminum then, after forming each of the damp wicks into a beehive hairdo atop the root beer bottle, he wrapped the neck and wick in the stiff foil to stop them from dripping gasoline. The four bottles fit perfectly into the bowling ball bag. A little newspaper padding to keep his babies from sliding around and…

“Ready to kick some ass!” he proclaimed in a whisper.

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China De Sade, a big budget porn flick from the sixties, was already playing when he walked into the Fox Theatre, located on a narrow one-way street in downtown Los Angeles.

Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he sat in an aisle seat at the side, about midway from the screen and far from any of the dozen or so guys sprinkled throughout the theatre. The floor was sticky from buttered popcorn and miscellaneous body fluids, but the seats were comfortable and the ‘all you can watch’ admission meant that, for five bucks, he had a safe place to hide out for the remainder of the afternoon. Ian set his bowling ball bag on the floor between his feet then pulled a new leather cap from inside his jacket. A cap that was identical to the one those “those punks” stole from him last night, but better. This one had the Harley Davidson logo, stitched in black and grey thread, on the front. Ian admired his new hat in the semi-darkness, then slipped it over his head of greasy hair. It fit fine, but Ian whipped it off anyway, just to look at it again before putting it back on. He smiled. It was a fine purchase; well, actually, he stolen it, but the Big 3 sporting goods store a few blocks away had plenty on the rack so he figured that they could afford to do without one.

Ian had his hand on the peak, to take it off and have one more look when a woman’s scream filled the theatre. Ian’s eyes were drawn to the screen where some big, black guy with a huge Afro was raping the actress, a white woman about his age. Ian had seen the movie three or four times before and even though the guy and girl were boyfriend and girlfriend, and even, it turns out, they were only pretending, the scene was his favorite.

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Anyone who knew plants would have breathed in the night air and been able to separate the sweet scent of azaleas from the musty smell of seawater. Ian, however, was oblivious to both, concerned only that his fly was up as he strolled out the front doors of the theatre and onto the sidewalk. He had no problem walking despite the beating he took last night. True, his legs were still a bit stiff, the dog bites still burned like hell, and he had to tilt his cap to avoid hitting the gash on the side of his head, but he’d been banged up worse before, much worse. Most recently by one of the enforcers for the Conges, a Vietnamese gang at Moslow, but even before that, in high school, in a fight with his buddy Jackie J.

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Up to the end of his second year of high school, Jack J was just an average sized kid. Five foot, ten inches, a lanky 140 lbs, hair down to his shoulders. However, when he returned to Torrance High School for his final year it looked as if someone had taken Jackie J’s head and put it on someone else’s body because from the neck down Jackie J had suddenly become a mass of rippling muscles. Jackie J swore that he wasn’t doing steroids, but all of the guys, including Ian, knew that he was full of shit. He also knew that Jackie J’s transformation had something to do with the fight he got into just a couple weeks before the summer break, with Malcolm, a member of the Black Aces, a local gang whose members all went to Torrance and all hung out in the northeast corner of the lunch pavilion. Everybody, including the teachers, knew it was their exclusive territory. Jackie J knew it too, but for some reason that had to do with some girl, Jackie J found himself in Black Aces territory around the beginning of lunch period. One word led to another and the fight was all over before Ian even heard that his buddy was in trouble.

Ian found Jackie J laying on the ground, spitting blood and vowing revenge. That was the last Ian saw his friend until he bumped into the new Jackie J and Victor Brandt on the second day of the Fall semester.

“Hey Ian, you up for a little action?” Jackie asked.

“Sure thing.”

And those were the only words the two exchanged as Ian followed his two friends straight into Black Aces territory. Malcolm only had a second to be surprised to see Jackie J before the five knuckles of Jackie’s muscular right hand connected with Malcolm’s jaw.

The ensuing melee lasted two, maybe three minutes. When the shouting and swinging stopped, Ian and Jackie J were still standing and three Black Aces were down, including Malcolm, who was out for the count; one Ace, who was on his knees crying about the two teeth he just spit out; and his associate, who was lying on his back, his right lower leg jutting in a direction it wasn’t designed to go and screaming “Oh God! Oh God!” over and over.

On their side, only Victor, an exchange student from Germany took enough hits to go down, but only briefly.

 Three to one.

It was a clear win for their side and although a bruised and battered Ian felt that the fight was clearly a case of ‘self-defense’, or at least ‘justifiable retribution’, Jackie J got kicked out of school anyway, while Victor and Ian were suspended for a week, followed by fifteen days of detention.

Although Ian plotted all through the year how he was going to get back at the Aces, he never did.  The second year Ian was at Moslow . However, he torched a black inmate named Chicago by rigging his cigarette lighter to explode.  And even though Chicago lived, Ian figured that evened it up the score for the Black Aces getting his friend Jackie J kicked out of school.

CHAPTER 22

After the movie, Ian visited a 7-11, where he stole a lighter to replace the one he used to torch the Sufferin’ Succotash. His new lighter was the cheap plastic variety, emblazoned with the words ‘Hollywood, California’ in gaudy pink letters. He would have preferred to have stolen something a little more expensive, but the lighter he wanted, a brass flip-top one with a picture of a classic ‘Vette engraved on the side, was in a display case right next to the cash register. Ian thought he could distract the 7-11 store clerk by asking for three different brands of smokes at the same time, but the clerk was too fast.

 The smokes cost him twice as much as the ones he used to buy in Moslow, but it didn’t matter: thanks to his mother’s emergency stash, he still had plenty of money.

Ian checked the immediate area for cops then began walking. The stop for the Washington Avenue bus was about ten minutes east. Time enough for a cigarette, so he pulled out his fresh pack of Camels.

Ian started smoking in the eighth grade. Not long after that, he discovered pot. A buddy at Moslow got him started on cigars, but good cigars were expensive, even in the slammer, so Ian mostly smoked Camels and pot, in that order. While he was still at Moslow, he promised himself that once he got out and got his hands on some serious money, he would buy a cherrywood humidor and stock it with some nice Cuban stogies.

Ian placed the cigarette in his mouth with his right hand then, with both the lighter and bowling ball bag in the other, he lit up and took a deep drag.

He was about to stash the lighter back into his pants pocket when he raised it to eye level, lit it, then stood transfixed, in the middle of the sidewalk, in the middle of the city, and marveled at the wondrous, rainbow colored flame. It wasn't until a wisp of gasoline skirted past his nose that he remembered that he was holding four bottles of inflammable liquid inches from a hissing, open flame.

Ian quickly released the red thumb tab, then slipped the lighter back into this pants pocket and continued walking. He was on top of the world.

“If the guys back in the slammer could just see me now,” he thought.

Ian’s walk down the littered sidewalk took him past the pawnshops, past City Hall and past a half-dozen empty storefronts. Through it all, he walked with the same cocky swagger as the fresh-faced kid in the home movie.

There was one other person at the stop for the Pico bus, an old man with an aluminum cane. But the old guy just stood there, so Ian had the whole bench for himself. Ian lit another cigarette then cocked his cap at an angle, thinking that it would give his look a certain savoir-faire. He and the old man waited twenty-five minutes for their bus.

The transit system in this geological bowl of smog and toxic gas had never been high on the taxpayers’ agenda.

----------

The sun was well into its ritual plunge toward the watery Pacific when Ian stepped off the bus at the always-busy corner of Lincoln and Washington then walked south to Mindanao.

A bunch of noisy teenagers walked past and although he had a good look at their faces, none of them looked familiar; none of them looked like the ones who beat him up and stole his cap. So Ian continued walking until the restaurant Shanghai Sun was within sight.

 He didn’t fit in tonight any better than the night before, but nobody paid much attention to the guy dressed in a leather Harley Davidson cap, black jacket and carrying a bowling ball bag.

It was, after all, L.A.

CHAPTER 23

Tony really wished he had worn his black Gap jeans. It would have looked much cooler with his grey turtleneck than the stonewash Levis he finally decided on. But the Gaps were dirty. Didn’t matter anyway. Once Mary saw his wheels, she wouldn’t even notice what he was wearing.

    Tony Ferguson had worked three part time jobs, over two school years and three summers to save up for this baby – a brand new Miata MX-5, with the LS package. After some pretty tense haggling, the whole thing cost him $24,673, not a bad price. Tony put up half and his father kicked in the other half. Three years! What a wait!  Tony was deathly afraid that Mazda would change the styling and he’d be fucked, but the 2002 model was pretty much the same kick-ass body design as the one three years before, though they made some improvements to the drive train.

    Tony could have been driving this baby years ago when he first got his driver's license, but his father had given Tony a long lecture about responsibility and paying his own way in the world. At the end of the speech, his dad had agreed to pay half the purchase price, although Tony had to take the full hit for the insurance. Three hundred and change a month! “Bunch of thieves, those insurance companies!”, he thought to himself. 

    Didn’t matter. He finally had his MX.

    Tony figured he could make the light so he cranked the speedometer up to sixty and watched for cops. His rear tires cleared the crosswalk at the intersection of the 90 freeway and Mindanao just as the light turned red. The rack-and-pinion front suspension eased him through the left-hand turn and southbound onto Mindanao. Tony watched the tachometer as he downshifted into third. The MX redlined at 6500, but he was nowhere near that. Not even when he dropped her into second. His Pirelli's squealed for a moment across the recycled asphalt road surface then dug in. Up into third gear, then fourth, then Tony backed off the gas and held it at a steady forty-five clicks. A little above the limit but not enough for a cop to pull him over. Not an L.A. County Sheriff anyway; downtown, however, it was strictly the speed limit. The word was that the LADP brass kept their traffic officers in small cages between shifts and fed them nothing but raw meat.

    Tony couldn't wait to see Mary's face. It was almost a year to the day since she dumped him for Manny Stox. Which was coincidentally, the day after Manny took delivery on a new Ferrari-red Fiat Spyder. “Fuckin' loser,” Tony muttered. Everyone knew that Spyders were gutless wonders! No torque through second and third and a lousy top end. An MX, running on three cylinders, could blow it off the road easy. Anyway, what kind of name was Stox?

    Mary's sexually repressed sister Ruth couldn't, or wouldn't, tell Tony if Mary was going to the Marina that night but Tony figured she would. And if she went to the Marina, Tony figured that the chances were good that he'd find her and her friends, and maybe even Manny the fuckin' sock, at the Rainbow Acres Juice Bar. He’d missed her by only a couple of minutes the night before, but he was feeling lucky that night.

     There wasn’t much traffic for a Saturday, but it was still pretty early. The seven o'clock movie at the United Artists theatre was just letting out and people were still heading for their cars. There was a surprising amount of sidewalk traffic for a place like L.A.

    Hispanic couple with a stroller, some kid with a bowling ball bag, and a clown in full costume, full makeup, and carrying a bunch of helium balloons. The circus must have been in town or so thought …

FERGUSON, Tony Ander, born May 3, 1978, died suddenly June 17, 2002. Loving son of Samuel and Heather Ferguson, brother of Sara-Ann. Private service. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the U.C.L.A. School for the Performing Arts.

CHAPTER 24

Ian's swagger had turned into a slight limp as he walked along the sidewalk.

The Marina had started to get busier and a little crazy. Cars whizzing by, everybody talking on their cell phones, cop driving past every five minutes. Ian even saw some asshole dressed up as a clown walking about a half block ahead of him.

Ian was ready to turn around and head back the way he came when he glanced toward the street and saw some kid drive past in a new red sports car. Ian recognized him from the night before; he was one of the guys who beat him up and stole his cap.

    Ian was trying to figure out his next move when woman driving a mini-van braked suddenly so her two kids could say something to the clown, then the car behind braked and pretty soon traffic in both directions has slowed to a crawl.

When he scanned the line of traffic, he saw the red sports car near the front, about a half block away. Without hesitating, Ian slid the tall handles of the bowling ball bag up onto his left shoulder, trying to avoid touching the bandaged spots, then pulled the zipper open venting the stale gasoline fumes into the evening air. While one hand peeled the foil wrapper off one of the bottles, the other dove into his pants pocket for the lighter.

Ian wanted to just walk up the kid and tossed the Molotov into his lap. Then watched the kid’s face as it melted in the flame. But there were too many witnesses and he sure didn’t want to get caught. No, he was going to have to be smart about his next move. Smart and fast.

So Ian waited until the traffic had stopped completely then stepped off the curb, wedged the Molotov in front of the kid’s right rear tire, lit the wick then leapt back on the sidewalk, whispered to himself…

“You fucked with the wrong guy sport.”

…then kept walking, with that same swagger, until he was far enough away that he could safely stop and watch from behind the wide trunk of a palm tree.

------------

Tony had no idea what was holding up traffic, but he honked his horn anyway.

It was the same moment that he thought he smelled gasoline that the car in front moved and he was able to inch forward.

There was a pop, then tinkle of glass. The next thing he knew he was surrounded on three sides by orange flames and he suddenly felt out of breath.

------------

The people who know about these things say that almost nobody dies from the flames. Acute respiratory distress is what kills them, long before the flames damage their bodies. First the heat causes thermal injury to the upper airways, resulting in bronchoconstriction, or swelling of the lining of the throat; then, what air is available for breathing is unfortunately saturated with particulate matter, which settles in the lungs, crippling the victim’s ability to absorb oxygen. A bit of a moot point since the nearby flame has already used up all of the oxygen in the air so there is nothing for the victim’s lungs to absorb anyway.

Tony struggled to remove his seat belt but fell unconscious within sixty seconds and died moments later.

From all around, frantic screams, desperate shouts and the belated wails of emergency sirens filled the smoke-clogged air.

Ian watched the show with orgasmic delight. The crying women, the impotent spectators, the magical glow that nearly touched the sky.

Within minutes the first group of grim-faced fire fighters arrived, leapt from their trucks, and began hosing down the inferno with torrents of water. Occasionally the soft Pacific winds would blow the milky beige mixture of billowing smoke and steam to the side, giving the crowd of onlookers a look at the ruins of the once pristine Miata and the driver, stiff and carbon black, still sitting upright in his seat.

----------

“It's not our business,” Hector chided.

“Honey, we saw what happened,” Sandra countered.

“It's not our…”

“Yes, it is!” Sandra insisted.

----------

The dark blue 2003 Ford Crown Victoria four-door cruised to a stop well outside the police lines. The driver, Detective Zachariah Mathison and his partner Detective Charles Wallish climbed out of their battered sedan.

Detective Wallish, a tall, heavyset black man with a perennial slouch, reluctantly pulled on his ill-fitting sports jacket but never bothered to fix the twisted collar. Detective Mathison, a red-haired Irishman, had a more polished look, and a stiff, military posture. The men, both in their late forties had been partners in the Detective Division of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department for nearly ten years, so it wasn't surprising to see that their movements, though slightly different in direction and content, were, nevertheless, synchronized through familiarity.

Who would have thought that a black, retired activist and a green-beer Irishman would have been a logical pairing? But Detectives Wallish and Mathison with their tailored scowls, gloomy outlooks on life, disastrous love lives and two-for-the-price-of-one suits were perfect for each other. Around Headquarters Bureau, they were known as the ‘Home Alone Brigade’ because both were raised by single mothers. Last Christmas their division decided to play Secret Santa instead of the usual gift exchange. Detectives Wallish and Mathison each received identical barbeque aprons with the words Father! Where?

Cops can be so cruel.

Wallish and Mathison began scanning the scene immediately, with Wallish studying the inferno and the drama surrounding it, while Mathison scanned the crowd for the perpetrator or ‘perp’ as law enforcement personnel tend to call them.

 Ian pulled up his pants zipper and stepped back, putting more distance between him and the cops, but staying close enough so he could see nearly everything that went on.

Off to his left, amid another clump of spectators, Ian noticed a man and a woman arguing. He figured that they were Mexican, but he couldn’t be sure. He also couldn't hear what they were saying over the roar of diesel engines and gushing water. Suddenly the man’s arms, which had been flailing through the air to make a point, finally lapsed to his side. With his eyes fixed on the ground, the man continued to listen to the woman’s argument, then when all her words were said, he sighed.

----------

“OK, but you and Felix stay here,” Hector insisted.

    “No, I want to come. We’re coming.”

    Hector knew that there was no point arguing. All he could do was hold his stubborn wife's hand as they stepped over the lattice of pressurized fire hoses and straddled the shallow pools of black water that separated them from the female Deputy Sheriff standing twenty or so feet away directing traffic.

----------

Few people in the crowd of spectators noticed when Hector and Sandra, she with their infant child tucked into her arms, stepped out of the knot of gawkers and approached the Deputy. Ian snickered, thinking that they were just tourists who probably wanted to get closer to take some pictures for the folks back home. But the first few words that Hector said to the Deputy Sheriff led to more words, then questions and more words. Finally, the Deputy Sheriff gestured to Detective Wallish, who was writing in his notepad while his partner shouted into his cell, trying to make himself understood.

The two detectives ambled over to the uniformed officer then listened as Hector and Sandra repeated their information.

Ian grew increasingly uneasy as the couple launched into a detailed flood of words that involved a flurry of hand motions and facial expressions. Ian thought that the Mexicans might have been ratting on him, but he didn’t want to make his move until he was sure. Hector was in the midst of a particularly long answer to one of Detective Mathison's questions when Sandra turned casually and glanced at the crowd of spectators surrounding Ian.

----------

“Over there. That's him,” Sandra whispered to Wallish, cutting her husband off in mid-sentence.

“The man with the Molotov?” Detective Wallish asked in a soft, almost fatherly tone.

Hector swiveled his head as far as he dared then glanced briefly at the crowd.

“Yes. Toward the…”

At that moment, Sandra began to turn to have another look.

“Don't Sandra! He'll know we’re talking about him! Detective Wallish, the guy, is at the back of the crowd. Just like we said. Twenty-five or so, leather baseball cap, black leather jacket.” 

Detective Wallish smiled matter-of-factly, “Thank you, folks. If you could just give your full names and contact information to the officer.”

Hector reacted immediately, “Is that really necessary?”

“Regulations, sir,” The detective replied quickly.

-----------

Ian watched as the red-haired cop said something to the couple; then both he and his black buddy walked away, each in different directions and neither of them in any particular hurry. Ian kept his eye on the red-haired cop because he was sort of walking in his direction. But somewhere between the fire truck and palm tree, the cop disappeared from view. Ian looked in the other direction, trying to spot the black cop, but he didn't see him either. Ian started backing up, squeezing his way through the crowd. Just as he broke through the main clump of spectators, he bumped into another, smaller group.

“Hey, watch where you're going asshole!”

Ian didn't recognize the voice of the guy whose foot he stepped on but, turning as he headed off in another direction, he recognized the face. It was another one of the kids who had beaten him up last night. Scanning the crowd, Ian recognized yet another, then another face. Ian cursed his bad luck. He could have gotten them all with one bottle. Like shootin’ ducks in a pond. One bottle – all of them. But there were too many people around, and cops for him to take the chance.

Off to one side, a movement caught Ian’s eye. The red-haired cop was walking directly toward him. Ian turned in the opposite direction then saw his black partner coming straight at him too.

“Fuckin' snitches,” Ian muttered as he considered his options. The dock area was behind him, but Ian didn't relish the thought of another night-time swim, so he figured that the path forward, was his best hope.

Ian stooped, then crept toward the front, squeezing and weaving through the sea of spectators. Finally, he sprinted toward the street, his feet clearing the fire hoses and all but a few of the puddles. The police had stopped traffic going both ways on Admiralty, but now that the fire was out they began to allow northbound cars to pass. Ian ran though the parking lot and dropped behind a low, neatly trimmed hedge.

Detectives Wallish and Mathison rushed through the crowd, not caring who they jostled, then, once they reached the front, split up. Detective Wallish circled to the left, around the fire scene, while his partner veered right.

Ian remained still for a minute or two then raised his head in time to see a beat-up Ford F-150 pickup heading toward him. An old guy was driving, half-watching the road ahead and half-studying the street map lying atop the steering wheel. As he slowed for the traffic light at Admiralty and Mindanao, he never noticed Ian dash toward his truck. Ian would have jumped into the back, but it was full to the brim with powdery chunks of broken drywall and twisted aluminum studs. So Ian ducked down and just ran alongside – using the truck to shield him from view. Once he reached Washington, he straightened then strolled with a cocky gate to the nearest bus stop. There he sat on the bench and lit a cigarette.

Overhead, the engines on a 757 screamed as it glided toward the runway. Ian looked up at the plane’s polished underbelly and wondered if any of its passengers knew that they were flying over a guy who had just kicked some serious ass and gotten away with it.

CHAPTER 25

The Sunset Medical Center stands on a massive chunk of real estate in an industrial area of L.A., tucked into the northwest armpit of where the 5 and 10 freeways intersect. Founded in 1878, it is the nation’s largest academic institution and one of America’s largest acute care hospitals. It is also where people go if they don’t have medical insurance. You see the Sunset Medical Center, bless its heart, doesn’t charge for emergency care. So if your child wakes up in the middle of the night with an ear infection, or if you’re feeling chest pains, or if some drunk driver just ploughed into you, then it’s the place to go for professional, caring and free medical attention. The Sunset Medical Center also operates one of only three burn centers in a county of sixteen million people.

The pedestrian entrance to the emergency faced west, which meant that every time the front door opened, the hospital’s security guard, who stood inside, got a bit of fresh air, a welcome relief from the hospitalized air pouring out of the ceiling vents. Officer Jose Martinez, the Sector 6E Security Officer that night, had been with the hospital about three years.

He didn’t plan to be a security guard for the rest of his life, but the pay was pretty good - $694.25 per week before taxes - two weeks paid vacation per year - plus 100% of all medical and dental for him and his family.

Last year Officer Martinez and his wife used his vacation time to visit her parents in Grass Valley, a small town just north of Sacramento.

Officer Martinez had four hours and twenty-three minutes left on his shift when Detective Wallish strolled through the double door followed by a tall, Anglo dressed in designer sweats and, curiously, black alligator leather dress shoes. From the width of the man’s shoulders and the way the muscles played in his neck, Officer Martinez figured that the alligator shoe guy worked out. From the slouch of his frame and the dark circles beneath his eyes, he also figured the man had a job that expected him to work long hours.

Maybe a doctor, or a lawyer or a God-damned Indian Chief for that matter.

What Office Martinez was absolutely certain of was that the guy in the expensive track suit and shoes was a stranger to the state-run, tax-subsidized, emergency ward of the Sunset Medical Center.

And he was correct.

The summer breeze that accompanied Detective Wallish through the door carried the scent of the ocean and azaleas. Officer Martinez relished the momentary pleasure.

------------

“Officer Martinez.”

“Good evening, detective.”

Wallish didn’t know Officer Martinez other than formally. He didn’t know his first name, or his marital status, kids, hobbies. And not to be insensitive, he didn’t care to know.  Detective Wallish hated Sunset Medical. Hated the smell and sound of the place. He even hated the daylight-balanced fluorescent lighting that made him feel ill if he spent more than ten minutes under its glare.

He didn’t really hate the people. It usually wasn’t their fault that they got shot, stabbed, beat up, poisoned, or occasionally, all four.

---------

By the time Triage Nurse Cynthia Fuller graduated from the nursing program at LA City College thirty-five years ago, she had decided that she wanted to be an actress, but by then she'd invested too much time and money in nursing to quit, so every day she acted as if she had made the right decision. Acted like she didn’t want to scream every time some whiny patient called ‘Nurrrrrssse!’ Acted as if she liked her co-workers. Acted as if she gave a rat’s ass about Florence Fuckin’ Nightingale or the entire medical profess...

    “Nurrrrrse!” the heroin addict in Treatment Area 3W cried out.

------------

Wallish liked Nurse Fuller: she was professional, efficient and could fake just the right amount of sympathy when the situation required it. She never would have admitted it but he could tell that like himself, she didn’t give a shit about her job or the people she worked with.

Wallish understood people who didn’t give a shit.

Nurse Fuller was sitting at her desk, filling out paperwork, when Detective Wallish stepped up to the thick Plexiglas window that enclosed the small office where she assigned the patients varying levels of urgency. Nurse Fuller had ignored her visitor for the requisite amount of time before she condescended to look up. For a moment, Wallish thought that the heavily made-up nurse had the beginnings of a smile when she recognized him, then decided that it was probably just an involuntary twitch. Perhaps the early phases of Parkinson’s.

Nurse Fuller would usually offer a “Good evening Detective Wallish” or at least a “How may I help you?” when the detective appeared at her window, but the moment she spotted the guy standing behind the detective, the guy in the track suit and dress shoes, the guy with the black clouds of impending tragedy congealing in the air above his slouched frame, Nurse Fuller knew that she could dispense with the usual formalities.

“Burn victim, Marina Del Rey?”

“Thanks, Cynthia,” the detective said with a matter-of-fact tone.

Nurse Fuller slapped shut the white hospital binder she was working on, then stood and pressed the wall-mounted button that opened the treatment area’s heavy metal double doors. Wallish pulled open the left side then held it for Mr. Ferguson.

Cynthia met them just inside.

“This way sir,” Cynthia said in a soft tone while gesturing with her left hand.

But Mr. Ferguson, although he was looking directly at Nurse Fuller, seemed to neither see nor hear her. Instead, he stood motionless in the open doorway.

“Sir?” she repeated, but again, to no avail.

Finally, Nurse Fuller shot a glance at the detective.

Wallish hated this part of his job. Searching through the pockets of bloody, or decaying, or burned victims for ID. Ringing the doorbells of their next of kin. Dispensing the news. Waiting for them to stop crying or screaming or both. Then waiting for the next of kin to dress before driving them to the morgue or hospital to view the body.

He hated it.

This time though, it was a little different. The wife wasn’t home, nor were any siblings. Only the father and he didn’t even twitch or flinch when Wallish asked him to I.D. the body, which may or may not be his son.

No emotion. No tears. No nothing. Mr. Ferguson just got real quiet and still, like he had lapsed into some kind of trance.

Protection, the detective figured. Like how the flesh swells after sustaining an injury. But with Ferguson it was as if some kind of protective pillow had wrapped itself around his head, blanketing his eyes and ears and brain.

“Mr. Ferguson!” Detective Wallish shouted, a little louder than he had intended and a little harsher than was his style.

Mr. Ferguson suddenly snapped out of his trance and turned toward Detective Wallish.

“I'm ready,” he said, but the detective knew from experience that such statements were a lie. No next of kin was ever ready for what they were about to see, for what they were about to feel.

Nurse Fuller led the way as Detective Wallish and Mr. Ferguson followed her into the treatment area, then into a maze of striped curtains, surrounded on all sides by moans, or grief, or ghastly silence. Abruptly she stopped in front of one of the curtains then paused, waiting for the detective to ask that question.

“Mr. Ferguson your son, if the victim is your son, he’s in pretty rough shape. Are you…?”

“I said I’m ready detective!”

“I'll wait for you out here Sir.”

The detective then turned and nodded to Nurse Fuller, who carefully pulled back the curtain surrounding the treatment cubicle. As Mr. Ferguson stepped inside, she and the detective locked eyes just before she jerked the curtain closed.

Wallish expected to hear some sound coming from behind the curtain but even after five, then nearly ten minutes, there was still only silence. Concerned that maybe Mr. Ferguson had fainted or had a heart attack, the detective quietly drew back the curtain to find Mr. Ferguson, standing beside his son, holding the boy’s charred hand.

In the harsh fluorescent light, the victim didn't even look human, lying on his side atop the sterile hospital gurney, arms out, bent at the waist as if he was still sitting in his beloved Miata. Blackened flesh hanging in rouge tinged clumps from his bones.

So ghastly was the sight, that to the uninitiated, Tony Ferguson’s corpse looked like the work of some deranged sculptor.

Mr. Ferguson gently lowered his son's hand to the gurney then spoke without turning.

“Who did this to my son?”

Detective Wallish never had a good answer when asked that question. Of course, department policy prevented him from speaking publicly about an ongoing investigation. Even if he knew who the perp was, and he didn’t, Wallish couldn’t divulge that information to a civilian, much less the victim’s next-of-kin.

So the detective fed Mr. Ferguson the standard answer, the one his partner was so fond of.

“We have several suspects under investigation, sir.”

That was usually the end of it, but not this time. The detective had barely reached the end of his sentence when Mr. Ferguson suddenly turned and lashed out with his right hand. Wallish’s upper body arched back, giving Ferguson’s fist a wide berth. Mr. Ferguson’s punch, however, wasn’t meant for the detective, but the wall behind him, a mark it hit with a sickening thud, not once but twice. The second time leaving a bloody imprint of Ferguson’s knuckles on the flat beige surface.

Wallish had seen plenty of angry people, but this guy was way off the scale.

“The name Goddamit!”

Seeing the fiery hatred in Mr. Ferguson’s eyes and the threatening body language, Wallish knew that he ought to keep his distance, but he didn’t. Instead the detective stepped forward and, although policy frowned on physical contact in those situations, he laid his hand on Mr. Ferguson’s shoulder, then, in a calm, reassuring tone, said, “I promise we’ll get this guy, Sir, and when we do…”

But Wallish never completed his sentence because Mr. Ferguson suddenly turned and charged through the curtain, stampeding like an angry bull through the billowing fabric, his lacerated hand raining bloody tears onto the gleaming linoleum floor. 

    Detective Wallish pulled the curtain closed to give Tony Ferguson a bit of privacy then followed the blood trail outside, where he found Mr. Ferguson standing in the middle of a dark street named, curiously, Hope.

The man’s head was bowed, his hands to his side, his eyes closed. His partner must have seen Mr. Ferguson exit, and walked to meet him. But Detective Wallish could see no evidence that Mathison and Ferguson had spoken, or that the grieving father was even aware that Wallish’s partner stood less than ten feet away, watching intently.

Detective Wallish, carrying a large padded envelope in his right hand, approached Mr. Ferguson cautiously.

“Sir?” he said quietly. But there was no a response.

“Mr. Ferguson?” the detective repeated.

Suddenly Mr. Ferguson turned toward Wallish. It was an abrupt, almost violent movement that sent the detective’s left hand racing for his Glock. Thank goodness the weapon never cleared leather. Wallish didn’t relish the thought of spending the next couple of hours filling out a Service Revolver Incident Report, required every time an officer drew his gun.

Ferguson was pissed, and who could blame him but Wallish had dealt with rich guys like Mr. Ferguson all his life and had learned that they almost never represented any physical danger to the police or public. They might beat up their wife, or embezzle funds, or get boozed up and run over some schnook with their SUV, but guns and knives, or even fists, were way too messy for his type.

 “What!” Ferguson shot back.

Detective Wallish bristled then decided to cut the man some slack. “The car is over there, Sir,” he said, pointing down the street.

“Thank you, Detective. Sorry.”

“No problem, Sir.”

Detectives Wallish and Mathison walked Mr. Ferguson to their car, exchanging glances but not words. Mathison unlocked the driver’s door, climbed behind the wheel then unlocked the front passenger and rear door.

 Mr. Ferguson climbed into the back seat then fell still, his eyes fixed on nothing in particular. Wallish knelt before him and held out the envelope he carried in his right hand.

“Sir, I, we, collected a few of your son’s things from his pockets,” Detective Wallish said quietly, almost in a whisper, holding out the envelope.

As Mr. Ferguson held out his hand to take the envelope that Detective Wallish recoiled at the sight of the man’s right hand which had been reduced to a swollen mound of bloody flesh, ghostly white bone and cartilage poking through its tattered covering of his second knuckle while rivulets of blood descended to the heel of his hand then leapt to the ground.

A few drops even found their way onto the detective’s penny loafers.

“You should get someone to take a look at that,” the detective murmured. But instead of responding, Mr. Ferguson slipped the envelope from the detective’s grasp, then laid it against his chest, wrapping his arms around it as if it were a loved one.

-----------

Mr. Ferguson was only vaguely aware of his journey home, instead; fuelled by a raging anger, a rapid-fire sequence of thoughts shot through his mind. What would he tell Heather? Did his son suffer? Should he call Father Phaelon? How does he go about making the funeral arrangements? Who is the bastard who did this to my son? All questions that he could not answer.

Not one of the three men felt like speaking during the drive back to the Ferguson home.

Thirty-five minutes later, Mathison pulled the Crown Vic to the curb and eased the gear lever into park. The ground floor of the sprawling Tudor-style mansion was dark; upstairs a single light blazed in what was probably the master bedroom.

The three men sat, silent and still, for perhaps a full minute before Wallish turned in his seat and looked at Mr. Ferguson.

“I know. Thanks.” And with that and nothing more, Mr. Ferguson opened his door and exited into the quiet, night air.

Mr. Ferguson walked slowly around the front of the car then stopped, closed his eyes and spoke as if exhausted, “I don’t know what to say to my wife, my daughter.”

“Do you want us to...” Mathison replied matter-of-factly.

“No!” Mr. Ferguson replied, “That’s my job.”

 “Keep me posted as the investigation continues.”

“We will.”

But by then Mr. Ferguson was well out of hearing range. Probably just as well, because Detective Mathison knew it was a lie.

The two detectives watched as Mr. Ferguson crossed the sidewalk on his way to his front door. His walk was lethargic, his steps hesitant.

It had been nearly eight years since Charles Wallish made that walk up the steps of his own North Hollywood home, and through the hallway to the kitchen where he found his wife, Jane, making cookies. It was February 28, 1984, 2:35 in the afternoon. She was surprised to see him home so early. He just walked into the kitchen and wrapped his arms around his wife and, holding her tightly, whispered...

“Our Jilly is dead, Honey. She passed away ten m…”

And that was all he could bear to say. The next thing he remembered was sitting with his wife on the kitchen floor, both crying, both clutching at each other as if the sheer desperation in their embrace could somehow make the cancer leave their three-year-old daughter’s little body and return her to life.

Detective Wallish watched Mr. Ferguson as he unlocked his front door, entered, then disappeared inside. It was then that Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Detective Charles Wallish, a man not known to swear, sighed and whispered, “Fuck!”

---------

Samuel Ferguson heard the telephone begin ringing as soon as he shut the door, but he thought that perhaps his mind was playing tricks on his ears.

Then it rang a second time.

“My God,” he whispered, “It’s too early for someone to call,” he muttered, “unless…”

Mr. Ferguson broke into a run, began dashing up the stairs, and was about half way to the top when his wife answered the telephone at their bedside table.

“Hello?” he heard her say.

Mr. Ferguson’s stomach knotted as he raised his leading leg higher, trying to climb two stairs at a time, but his body wouldn’t allow it.

“Speaking,” she replied.

Mr. Ferguson’s heart was pounding at a manic tempo and his lungs struggled desperately for air by the time he reached the second-floor landing and began racing down the hall toward their bedroom.

“Condolences for what?” he heard his wife ask.

Mr. Ferguson reached their open bedroom door just as his wife hung up the phone. Perplexed, yet happy to see her husband, she managed a weak smile.

“Oh, there you are Samuel. I had no idea where you had gone. You always leave a note. Sorry, I was so late. After the play a group of the girls wanted to go that the Tivoli for drinks. Anyway, I just had the strangest call, Samuel. From a reporter at one of the television stations. I hadn’t said two words before she suddenly hung up. Did you have to go out to meet a client?”

Mr. Ferguson couldn’t bring himself to lie so instead, he ignored his wife’s question.

“Stay there. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Sara-Ann’s room was directly across from Tony’s. And while his door bore the tape mark scars of long-removed celebrity posters and rock station bumper stickers, her door was still adorned with the mustard yellow sun she painted one rainy afternoon, ten years ago. Tony always closed his door; Sara-Ann kept hers half-open when she slept.

The hallway light woke her up before her father even stepped into the room.

“Daddy?”

“Baby, I need you to come into our bedroom.”

“Now?”

“Yes, please.”

His wife was still sitting on the bed, exactly where he left her when Mr. Ferguson re-entered their room. Sara-Ann, her face imprinted with the folds of her pillow, her golden hair still in bedtime pigtails, followed. Heather’s body tensed, her forehead lined.

“Tony’s not home yet?” Heather asked.

Sara-Ann sat beside her mother on the bed and tried to wipe the sleep from her eyes.

Mr. Ferguson dropped to his knees before them.

“Samuel, what the hell is going on!” she demanded.

And, at that moment Mr. Ferguson leaned forward and wrapped his long arms around what was left of his family and whispered, “Our Tony is dead.”

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