“I want to help out,” echoed Willie, and his eyes rolled up at us with a serious and sad expression. Everything he said had borne the same monotone, as if the world he saw through those colorless eyes was only gray-on-gray.
Andrew was gazing down at him.
“It’s going to rain, buddy. Let me give you a ride to the shelter.”
“That’s very nice of you, but I’m waiting for a dude named Steve. We’re going up to Malibu. He has access to a propane stove,” said Willie with a meaningful raise of white eyebrows. “It’s better to stay together because of street violence. That way we can maintain a reasonable situation.” “You’re not going up to Malibu tonight.”
Willie thought about this and nodded his shaggy head. “That’s true, I have to work.”
“What kind of work do you do?” I asked curiously.
“I travel around America for the national Defense Department,” he said. “I have an ID which the El Monte police took away. That’s what I’m talking about, trying to regain my property. They also impounded my vehicle. My job is to drive randomly throughout the United States and data-process sponge cake in the U.S. population.” I had the woozy feeling of being lifted up and set back down, like bobbing in a wave.
“Sponge cake?”
“‘Sponge cake’ is a code name that refers to Patricia Hearst, who was an individual from the Soviet Union who was being data-processed to be a high warden in the NOBD. That’s what I was trained to do, you see. Sometimes I would encounter a candlelight situation.” Andrew was looking away. A damp breeze lifted up the back of his hair.
“A candlelight situation,” Willie explained, “is an entity case where the future and today merge together.”
I thought for a moment, just one moment, he was pulling the greatest joke of all time. Then it all drained out of me.
“Willie,” I said gently, “have you ever been in a hospital?”
“Oh, yes. Yes. I was flying a Cobra and slammed into a mountain in Wyoming called Devil’s Ring. They put me in the hospital.”
“Did they give you medication?”
“They just give me medication and you talk to someone and they release you. I’m taking medication right now,” said Willie. “I’m a depressed person right now. I personally knew Sylvester Stallone in the HBD. He was killed in nineteen seventy.” Willie said these things with the same measured dullness as before. I felt as if I were in the presence of something enormous, like the pulsing of the stars.
I gave him ten bucks and said, “Take care of yourself.”
“What did you say your name was?”
I gave him another card.
“Thank you. I’m generally around here, if you want to talk to me.”
“God bless,” said Andrew.
We left him sitting cross-legged in the doorway, a mound of bedroll and scraggly white hair.
“Sometimes they whip up a vehicle and leave me someplace,” he called after us.
As we walked through the deserted street, I laid my head against Andrew’s shoulder, certain that they did.
And I dreamed we were in Amsterdam, walking hand in hand, and it was wet and cold and there were lights on the canals.
Five
Out of nowhere came the smell of cooking onions and the low chatter of the TV. I sat up in bed, awake, heart pounding, late for something I could not remember. Stocks were being traded in New York, but here it was still dark, a little after 6 a.m., Day Three. And the girl was still missing.
We had spent the last two nights in my apartment in Marina Del Rey, averaging about four hours’ sleep, which meant you were never out of the roar. Your eyes might be closed, but case points kept flipping through your brain: Jumpy parents. Employee records. Tax returns. A man with a camera. Sylvester Stallone. Rich kids talking rap and smoking weed and a voice in the night, fifteen years old, begging for some hopped-up piece of shit to bestow upon her the privilege of her life.
We had a bulletin out on the van that had been hovering around the Third Street Promenade: a dark green 1989 Dodge, identified separately by both youngsters, Stephanie and Ethan, after looking through police files. The Korean gang member, David Yi, who had stolen a load of spandex from the Meyer-Murphy factory and had been convicted, at least in part by testimony from Juliana’s dad, was at present serving four years in state prison on a plea bargain and not considered to be a suspect.
We’d had briefings every day at the police station, in a windowless lounge next to a kitchen that our techs had transformed into a command post: secured phones, a white board on an easel, a chain of laptops to input Rapid Start — software designed to track every byte of information relevant to the investigation, from interviews to lab reports, photos, computer searches, archives and dust bunnies under the bed. Rapid Start was a cutting-edge tool for examining the particulars and getting the overview. One pair of Big Eyes would be responsible for reading every page of Rapid Start every day: looking for patterns, searching out disconnects — the unanswered questions and the links.
Big Eyes. That would be me.
The case had a name:
And that’s all we had.
Halfway out of bed I stole one more moment, to inhale the slow rich bloom of coffee and listen with pleasure to Andrew banging cabinet doors in the kitchen. My grandmother’s quilt lay on the carpet where it had been kicked; jasmine-scented massage oil stood, uncapped, next to a vibrator in full view on the nightstand. I slipped it back under the bed. We had been short of time that morning, forced to take the express route — which, in a tender way, seemed in keeping with our newfound teamwork on the job. He had been right, at the beach, in the parking lot, when he said it would be a kick. More than right. We were free and we were flying. We were hanging in that buoyant pocket in the sky.
I swung into the living room. Milky white light was coming through the curtains. As I drew them back, rows and rows of boats docked at the huge Marina were becoming visible in random jigsaw pieces out of a pale mist — hulls, rigging, motors, masts.
“Sleep well?” Andrew wiggled his nose with obnoxious smugness, then went back to assembling breakfast burritos.
“Pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”
He said, “Aren’t you?”
A fresh copy of today’s
“Looks like we still haven’t made the news.”
“From your lips.”
Mortified that her daughter, Stephanie, had sent Juliana on a fool’s errand, spunky Mrs. Kent organized a “community response,” apparently believing that she and her TV director husband knew more about crime fighting than we did. Laurel West Academy parents came running, with posters, fliers, search parties at the ready and showbiz contacts speed-dialing the story to the national news — exactly wrong. I thought we had been clear on Day One that she would not discuss the case. You didn’t want to panic the suspect, have him escalate to murder if the victim wasn’t already dead. Special Agent in Charge Robert Galloway had not been pleased. This was not the
