Self-Defence

He faced me once more. 'I'm not saying she's not dead, Alex. Sounds like she probably is. But that doesn't mean she died up in Lowell's place, and after all these years I don't see how you're gonna get any closer to it.'

'I don't either. God, I really hope I haven't lit a fire under Best. At the very least, I'm giving him false hope.'

'Well,' he said, 'if you're right about his being a man of faith, maybe it'll carry him through.'

'Maybe.' I sat forward on the bench. A tiny colorless spider had crawled onto my knee. I picked it up carefully, and its thread legs wriggled frantically. Placing it on the grass, I watched it disappear among the blades.

Milo said, 'Something has been bothering me, though. What you told me about brother Peter. Guy never travels, but he just happens to be out of town when she sticks her head in the oven? Unemployed, but he's too tied up with business to get back? Then he takes the time to call Embrey and a half brother he hasn't seen in twenty years but not Lucy? Then you tell me he's weird. And now Lucy's saying someone swiped her underwear, and he has a key to her apartment.'

'You think he did it?'

'I think it sounds like he's running from something. Maybe nasty impulses. Maybe he's close to her in a way that scares him, so he split to the desert to be alone with his goddamn thoughts.'

'Oh, man,' I said. 'Just what Lucy needs.'

I thought about my brief meeting with Peter, trying to remember as much as I could about him. Pale face, sleepy voice. Cold hands. Bulky sweater on a hot day. Eager to get back to the car. Looking down at his lap…

'What if he's running from something else?' I said.

I described the brother.

Milo looked at me. His big black eyebrows were up.

'Junkie?'

'It fits, doesn't it? His unemployment, Lucy's defensive attitude- evasive, actually. I remember her saying he was always trying to protect her 'even though he'-and then she broke off the sentence. When I pressed she said, Even though he isn't the toughest guy in the world. But it wasn't what she started to say. I know it's conjecture, but he really wanted to get back inside that car. When I glanced back, he was sitting low in the seat. As if he was doing something. Lucy looked back too, and that session she dropped her chronic smile. He could have been fixing right there. She could have known.'

'Junkie,' he repeated. 'Could be. Hungry hypes don't wait for a corner suite and fresh linens.'

'It would explain his cutting out on Lucy in her time of need. Talking to everyone else but her because she'd know he was traveling to make a buy, and he didn't want to have to explain. Doesn't lots of stuff come into New Mexico from the border?'

He nodded. 'But no shortage of stuff right here in L.A.'

'Maybe he couldn't buy here. Because he'd run up some serious debts- that could be why he left town. Avoiding creditors. The kind who don't send overdue notices.' My stomach tightened. 'For all we know, the creditors know about Lucy and are trying to use her as leverage. Maybe those phone hang-ups were real. Maybe someone really did break in and mess with her underwear.'

'No one broke in,' he said. 'She said there was no evidence of that.'

'Okay, so they tossed Puck's place and found the key to Lucy's apartment.'

'That's awfully subtle for people like that,' he said. 'They'd enjoy breaking in.'

'Maybe it's at a subtle stage. Intimidating him so he makes a big score for them and settles up. Maybe he's a longtime seller. How else would he pay for his habit without a job? Lucy's got a family trust fund that pays her a thousand dollars a month, so he might too. But with any kind of habit, a thousand a month wouldn't go very far.'

'Trust fund from Lowell's side of the family or the mother's?'

'Lowell's.'

'Daddy abandons the kids, but supports them?'

'It's a generation-skipping thing set up by his mother for taxes. He may have no control over it.'

'Leverage,' he said. 'Yeah, be nice to blame it all on the dope demons and restore her credibility. But I still don't see any connection to her head in the oven.'

'What if someone drugged her and put her there? She's a creature of routine, has a drink of juice, every night, watches PBS. That would explain the drapes being open- they wanted her to be found. Wanted to send a message to Puck. Wouldn't that be something? We're all assuming she's lying or denying, and she's telling the truth?'

He rubbed his face. 'It would absolutely be something, Alex. It would be Fantasyland, 'cause there's no knot on her head and the hospital found nothing on her dope panel.'

'What if they gave her something the panel doesn't test for, like chloroform?'

'Hey,' he said, 'you wanna theorize, I say it's more likely Pucky himself tried to gas her- pissed 'cause she wouldn't give him dope money. Or maybe he's just after her chunk of the trust fund and split town to give himself an alibi. And he's calling Ken to find out if she's dead. You like that one, I can make up six more like it for a quarter. Couple more quarters, I'll fill your day with fantasy.'

Off in the distance, the retriever sniffed the air and bolted off after something. 'You're right,' I said. 'I'm lapsing into wishful thinking because I'd just love it if she didn't try to destroy herself. But she did. And for all I know, Puck never touched dope. Just a shy guy with circulatory problems.'

'No,' he said, 'there's something off about him. I wanted to check him out on the computer this morning, but I got called to the market two-eleven at six-thirty. First thing I do when I get back is play computer games. Got an address for him?'

'Ken said Studio City. Are you still going to check out Trafficant?'

'Sure, why not? I'm already pushing buttons.'

'Poor Lucy,' I said. 'Another hurt.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'Hurt seems to be on her dance card.'

***

It was 1 P.M. when I got back to Malibu. While stopped at a red light near the pier, I caught a look at Shooting the Curl's facade. White building, blued windows. A sign with fat white letters spelling out the name over a mural of a wet-suited surfer riding a big wave.

Paradise Cove was ten miles later. A neon sign on a tall pole pointed toward the beach. THE SAND DOLLAR Breakfast Lunch Dinner. Impulsively, I turned off.

A dipping road took me past an acre or so of wildflowers, then a trailer park shaded by huge shaggy eucalyptus. Between the trees, the water was flat and silver. Another hundred feet and I came up against a guardhouse and a lowered wooden arm. A sign said the beach was private and it would cost $5 to go any farther unless I was eating at the restaurant.

The kid in the guardhouse stuck his head out. His nose was peeling and his sunglasses were mirrored.

'Sand Dollar,' I said.

'Five bucks.' He handed me a ticket. 'Get this stamped and I'll give it back to you when you leave.'

I drove down the final slope to a big wide parking lot. The restaurant was down at the bottom, set on the sand, a wood-shingled shuttered thing with a Happy Hour banner above the door.

Inside was a dark waiting area carpeted in red felt, paneled in cheap wood, and hung with salt-eaten nautical gear. No one was waiting, but a cigarette was smoldering in an ashtray. To the right was a cavelike bar with a couple of people bellying up and watching stand-up comedy on cable. Straight ahead was an empty host's stand and, beyond that, the restaurant.

The main room was gigantic, the way L.A. restaurants used to be before the land boom, with two long rows of red brass-buttoned booths and the same felt carpeting. The entire beach wall was glass. A big storm, several years ago, had sheared off one-third of the pier. The remains jutted over the water. A few tourists sat on the beach. The people in the restaurant looked mostly like locals, but there weren't many of them and they were distributed