and I stayed well behind. She drove an early-’90s Dodge that was slow and slumped to starboard and easy to follow.
She drove to a small tract home out in La Mesa east of downtown. I slowed and watched her pull into the driveway. I went past, circled the block, then came back and parked across the street, one house down.
The house was vintage ’50s, one of hundreds built in La Mesa not long after World War II. Many of those navy men and women who’d served and seen San Diego came back looking for a place to live in this sunny and unhurried city.
A living room light was on and the drapes were drawn casually, with a good gap in the middle and another at one end. Someone moved across the living room then lamplight came from the back of the house through a bedroom window on the side I could see. A few minutes went by and I figured she was showering, so I got out and strolled down the sidewalk. Then I doubled back and cut across the little yard and stood under the canopy of a coral tree. I stepped up close to the living room window and looked through the middle gap.
The room was sparsely furnished in what looked like thrift-shop eclectic—a braided rug over the darkly stained wood floor, an American colonial coffee table, an orange-yellow-black plaid sofa with thin padding. There was a stack of black three-ring binders on the coffee table. Right in front of me was the back end of a TV, not a flat screen but one of the old ones with the big butts and masses of cords and coax cable sprouting everywhere.
I moved along the perimeter of the house and let myself through a creaking gate but no dogs barked and I soon came to a dark side window. The blinds were drawn but they were old and some were broken and several were bent. Through a hole I could make out a small bedroom. All it had was a chest of drawers and a stroller with a baby asleep in it, and I didn’t have to look at that baby very long before I realized it was a doll.
Farrel walked past the room in what looked like a long white bathrobe and something on her head. I waited awhile then backed out across the neighbor’s yard and walked to my car. I settled in behind the wheel and used the binoculars and I could see Farrel on the plaid sofa, hair up in a towel, both hands on a sixteen-ounce can of beer seated between her legs. She leaned forward and picked up one of the black binders, looked at it like she’d seen it a hundred times before, then set it down beside her. She seemed tired but peaceful with the TV light playing off her face.
Twenty minutes later a battered Mustang roared up and parked behind the Dodge and Sal got out. Gone were the sharp clothes and in their place were jeans and a fleece-lined denim jacket and a pair of shineless harness boots that clomped and slouched as he keyed open the front door and went through.
I glassed the gap in the living room curtains and Farrel’s face rushed at me. She said something without looking at Sal. He stood before her, his back to me, and shrugged. He snatched the beer can from her and held it up for a long drink, then pushed it back between her legs and whipped off his coat. He wore a blue shirt with a local pizza parlor logo on it. This he pulled off as he walked into the back rooms.
He came out a few minutes later wearing jeans and a singlet, his hair wet and combed back. He was a lean young man, broad shouldered, tall. For the first time I realized he was handsome. He walked past Farrel into the kitchen and came back with a can of beer and sat down on the couch not too near and not too far from her. He squeezed her robe once where her knee would be then let his hand fall to the sofa.
They talked without looking at each other but I can’t read lips. It looked like a “and how was your day” kind of conversation, or maybe something about the TV show that was on, which threw blue light upon them like fish underwater.
After a while they stopped talking, and a few minutes later Farrel lifted the remote and the blue light was gone and she had picked up one of the black binders from the pile at her end of the couch.
She opened it and read out loud. There was no writing or label or title on the cover.
She waved the binder at him and pointed at a page and read a line to him.
He repeated it. I was pretty sure.
She read it again and he repeated it. I was pretty sure again.
They both laughed.
Then another line. They each said it, whatever it was. Sal stood over her then and aimed a finger at her face and said the line again. She stood and stripped the towel off her head and said something and they both laughed again.
He got up and brought two more big cans of beer from kitchen and he opened one for her and took her empty. He tossed the towel onto her lap and sat down close to her, put his bare feet up on the coffee table by the binders and scrunched down so his head was level with hers. She clicked the TV back on.
I waited for an hour. Another beer each. Not much talk. They both fell asleep sitting up, heads back on the sofa.
It was almost three-thirty in the morning when Farrel stood, rubbed the back of her neck, then tightened the robe sash. She walked deeper into the house and out of my sight.
A few minutes later Sal rose and hit the lights. In the TV glow I could see him stretch out full length on the couch and set one arm over his eyes and take a deep breath and let it slowly out.
Two mornings later, at about the same dark hour, I was at headquarters writing a crime scene report. I’m an occasional insomniac and I choose to get paperwork done during those long, haunted times. Of course I listen to our dispatch radio, keeping half an ear on the hundreds of calls that come in every shift.
So when I heard the possible 187 at Skin nightclub I was out the door fast.
Two squad cars were already there and two more screamed into the parking lot as I got out of my car.
“The janitor called 911,” said one of the uniforms. “I was first on scene and he let me in. There’s a dead man back in the kitchen. I think it’s one of the managers. I tried to check his pulse but couldn’t reach that far. You’ll see.”
I asked the patrolmen to seal both the back and front entrances and start a sign-in log, always a good idea if you don’t want your crime scene to spiral into chaos. You’d be surprised how many people will trample through and wreck evidence, many of them cops.
I walked in, past the bar and the tables and the stage, then into a small, poorly lit, grease-darkened kitchen. Another uniform stood near a walk-in freezer, talking with a young man wearing a light blue shirt with a name patch
