us her last name, as if we don’t deserve more than the minimum. Tall and white-blond and sun-seamed; her midriff blouse reveals a navel that should never have been pierced. She works hard at looking thirty, hasn’t labored at anything else for years. Her attitude is imperiously clear: Police work is one step above septic-scrubber and Milo and Reed and Fox and I should be genuflecting every ten seconds for the privilege of using her borrowed space.
Her brother would not approve of such frost. Terming her “an insufferable mooch” when Robin reaches him in Lisbon, he agrees readily to donate the house.
“Thanks, Gordie.”
“Sounds exciting, luv.”
“Hopefully it won’t be.”
“What-oh, yeah, of course. Either way, it’s yours for as long as you need it, luv. Thanks for cleaning the bridge pickup on the Tele. Just played it in front of seventy-eight thousand people and it
“That’s great, Gordie. You’ll tell Nonie we’ll be showing up?”
“Did it right off, told her to cooperate fully.
Gordie’s call notwithstanding, Nonie chooses to be cranky. Milo adopts a more diplomatic approach than that suggested by Gordie, listening patiently as Nonie drops name after name, flicks her hair, drinks brandy, struggles pathetically to bask in her sibling’s reflected fame.
When she stops to take a breath, he gets her talking about the table from Tuscany, applauds her good taste without laying it on too thick. Despite the fact that she’s never actually come out and claimed she found it.
She peers at him suspiciously, but is eventually won over by his persistence and her own need to feel important.
When the time is right, he gives her a hundred dollars and asks her to leave for her own safety, have a nice dinner on LAPD. The money comes out of his own pocket. Nonie looks at the cash. “The places I go, this might cover drinks.”
Milo peels off more bills. She accepts them with a look of great personal sacrifice, fetches her Marc Jacobs bag, puts on her Prada shawl, stomps toward the door on her slingback Manolos.
Moe Reed walks her outside to her Prius. Remains with her until she hangs a reckless right turn onto Pacific Coast Highway, narrowly avoids collision with an oncoming SUV, speeds off amid a chorus of horns.
Before Reed returns to the house, he gazes south, though he has no hope of spotting Detective Sean Binchy a hundred fifty yards away, stationed in an unmarked sedan in front of a shuttered pizza joint. A cheap laptop sits on the passenger seat, programmed to stream the same feed Aaron Fox has rigged into his computer. Getting the “inferior piece of crap” to cooperate has turned out to be the biggest hitch so far, with Aaron Fox cheerfully demeaning civil service “snitware” before finally succeeding. Even after the connection is made, transmission is spotty, sound obscured by the traffic on PCH.
Binchy received the laptop from Milo at six p.m., has already been watching the Vander house for an hour when we arrive at Gordie’s. No one has entered or exited and the garage door has been left open per Travis Huck’s instructions.
Huck stands in the sand.
Eight o’clock arrives. Passes.
Eight oh five, ten, twelve… we wonder if this will fizzle.
The garage door left open is a positive sign, and we cling to it.
Eight fifteen. Huck seems undisturbed. Then I remember he’s not wearing a watch.
It finally happens at eight sixteen, sudden and jarring as a heart attack.
Moe Reed is the first to notice. He points at the screen, nearly levitates from his seat.
Simone Vander has materialized on the beach. From nowhere.
The camera in Travis Huck’s button captures her willowy frame floating forward.
I think of a mermaid rising from the ocean.
As she gets closer, the bag in her hand takes shape. Large, paper, Trader Joe’s logo. Everything right on course, so far so good.
Simone’s clothes are dry, maybe a walk-on-water miracle?
So-thin girl, dry hair fluffing in the breeze. She walks along the beach. Bare feet mold to the sand. Walking with confidence, a rich girl accustomed to private silica, ambling, loose-limbed, swinging the bag, not a care in the world.
Huck stands there.
Milo says, “Where the hell did she come from?”
Aaron Fox says, “Don’t know. Camera is great for up close but past a certain point, you lose clarity in the long image.”
As if in illustration, Simone steps within fifteen feet of Huck, stares at him, stops, and her facial features clarify. Maybe a bit more tense than her easy walk had suggested. Green overtones don’t help. Bones sharper than I remember.
But still, a pretty girl.
The outfit she’s picked is SoCal Cutie 101: sprayed-on, low-riding jeans, dark middy blouse revealing a drum- tight belly, bangle bracelets, big hoop earrings.
Two pierces in her navel. The breeze blows dark hair away from her left ear, revealing a solitary diamond glinting from cartilage. The feed is that good.
Huck doesn’t move and for several seconds, neither does Simone.
“Travis.” The sound’s a bit grainy and her voice seems high, distant, muffled. As if she’s talking through a mouthful of whipped cream. Or blood.
“Simone.”
“Where will you go?”
“Not important.”
Simone smiles, steps closer, swinging the bag. “Poor Travis.”
“Poor Kelvin.”
Simone’s smile freezes. “Your little buddy.”
“Your little brother.”
“Half brother,” she says.
“Gook brother,” he says.
She gives a start, her eyes narrow, backtracking, trying to figure out where he got that.
She says, “Didn’t know you were a racist.”
“I heard you say it, Simone.” Something has changed in Huck’s voice. Deeper. Tighter.
Fox catches it. “Sounds like he’s working himself up. He goes for her, we’re too far to stop it.”
No one in the room answers him.
Simone Vander says, “You stalked me.”
“I did.”
She laughs at the shameless admission. “I fuck you four times and you can’t get over it.”
“Five.”
“Four. Loser. The first time was a joke. You have to actually put it in before you
She walks closer to Huck.
“You are such a dickbrain
“I know.”
His flat agreeability enrages her and her eyes turn to surgical incisions. She stops, sinks into the sand a bit, shifts position and finds higher ground. The bag swings wider. “You think you can escape your loser self by admitting that you’re a loser? What’s that, some rehab bullshit?”
Huck doesn’t respond.
“You’re a loser, a retard, a dickbrain preemie burnout. So don’t go thinking you can mess with me, Travis. Only
