mortar shell that had separated his shoulder in Korea and laced his head with shrapnel had forever erased memories from those days. But here, to his astonishment, they flooded back, and along with them, memories of white coats and hypodermics and Project Enduring Valor. He babbled into the microphone until he lost consciousness.
The next day, after the lights had gone, he played the tapes and heard his voice as if for the first time and listened to his words relating strange tales of which he had no memory. Now certain this was the beginning of Alzheimer's like Dora's, he pulled out his old. 12-gauge, the Remington automatic built on the Browning patent that had once made him a legendary wing shot in any season, loaded three cartridges with number four shot- the largest he had since duck hunting was his favorite-then with an old cassette of Dora singing in the background, he danced with the. 12-gauge for the entire morning before calling Dooney.
Two hours later at the VA hospital in Jackson, they sat in the waiting room almost all day until a harried physician came out, listened to his story, pried the shoebox with the cassettes away from Talmadge, and arranged for his admittance.
If only he had left the freaking tapes at home, things would be so different now, as he shifted his focus to the television screen where one of CNN's artlessly untalented but sensuously full-lipped news girls filled the screen, droning on about some flood in Europe washing away priceless art treasures. She wore a sly smile on her face as she read this tragic story. Then she read something that cut through Talmadge's latest light storm.
'Eight Russian soldiers were gunned down and three others wounded yesterday by one of their comrades in the Caucasus Mountains on a remote crossing post on the border with Georgia,' she said with that sly cynical smirk just below the surface. 'A regional duty officer with Russia's branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said the shooter was under the influence of some sort of hallucinogenic mushroom popular with conscripts in the remote border region. This is the second such shooting in the same region within the past four months as desertions, violence, and suicides continue to plague Russia's deteriorating military establishment… And now with entertainment news about Paris, J. Lo, and Britney…'
Through the scintillating lights that dominated his vision now, Talmadge concentrated all his anger on the video camera. 'Russians're tryin' y'own damn shit, ain't they?' he began. 'Fucking mushroom story makes a damn good cover-up, huh? Huh! Well, it's a shitload bettuh than that fuckin' combat stress crap y'all trotted out after all those killin's at Ft. Bragg when the boys came home from Afghanistan.' His anger and the electrical storm in his brain began to merge. 'You limpdicked cocksuckuhs hung those boys out t'dry ovuh My Lai an' all those other times when it was th' fucking drugs, y'drugs, y'fuckin' drugs, y'fuckin' drugs, y'fuckin' drugs, fuggingdrugs! Fuggingdrugs!'
He raged at the camera until the arcing neon rainbow filled his vision and his mind, clutched at the deepest parts of his entrails, and squeezed the breath from his chest.
Then Darryl Talmadge buckled face-first to the floor.
CHAPTER 18
I sat on the guano-frosted concrete riprap jetty and field-stripped my. 45 and my cell phone. Either might save my life if my assailants had friends around. Shaking the water out of the gun and phone, drying off the. 45 cartridges and battery, took me less than five minutes, about as long as it took the L.A. County Sheriff's Department Harbor Patrol to show up with two fiberglass-hulled boats and a bright orange inflatable. Behind came the Coast Guard's forty-foot multipurpose rescue and fire-suppression vessel. County Fire Department trucks made their way along the jetty running between Ballona Creek and the Marina's main jetty.
The Coast Guard vessel technically wasn't supposed to respond to incidents here in the sheriff's jurisdiction inside the marina. But tonight, the sheriff had obviously requested assistance under their mutual aid pact. I knew this because I had spent more than twelve years as a reserve with the Sheriff's Search and Rescue team and almost as long with the Coast Guard Auxiliary. I didn't get paid for any of that, and in fact, equipping the Jambalaya to serve as a Coast Guard Auxiliary facility took a fair amount of my personal cash. But I didn't mind. I told most people it was my way of giving back to the community, which was mostly true. Only, I could never decide whether that counterbalanced the sheer fun of testing myself against the ocean when no sane person would be out on it (those being the ones we usually had to rescue) or dangling from a line beneath a helicopter to rescue the equivalent fools in the mountains.
I thought about this as I sat on the stinking rocks and watched the Jambalaya and the Cigarette boat melt into one crumpling mass of gasoline, diesel fuel, and burning fiberglass resin that had gone up far quicker than I had ever seen before. I guessed it was the enormous amount of gasoline in the Cigarette boat's tanks.
The Harbor Patrol and the Coast Guard spotlights supplemented the already ample light from private watercraft, blasting the scene with stark, flat illumination from so many directions it bleached out shadows and washed away colors with a blue-white gesso that made it look like a virgin paint-by-numbers canvas. I squinted into the light, grateful to see all three passengers aboard the Cigarette boat being pulled aboard other boats.
The Jambalaya's aluminum mast softened from the heat, then wilted, sending the masthead anemometer and other instruments plunging into the water.
The Coast Guard vessel maneuvered gingerly in close to the wreckage to allow the crew to spray fire- suppressing foam. Abruptly the two burning boats made a noise oddly reminiscent of a flushing toilet, then sank immediately, propelled to the bottom, no doubt, by the massive lead weight in the Jambalaya's finned, torpedo- shaped keel.
Watching the Jambalaya's rigging disappear beneath the water sucked me under my own surface for a moment. Like the individual frames of a motion picture flashing by too quickly to focus on any single one the images of what I had lost aboard the Jambalaya created a deep, unified sense of loss.
I stood up straight and tall and tried to shake off the sadness. I focused instead on the Coast Guard scattering foam to quell the remaining fire on the surface; I teased the scene apart with my eyes, desperate to spot someone thrashing about. But as one of the Harbor Patrol's inflatables made its way toward me, I grew increasingly comfortable that my assailant had not made it out before the burning mass sizzled beneath the waves.
'What in hell've you gotten yourself into this time, Doc?' I recognized sheriff's sergeant Vince Sloane's gruff Brooklyn accent before I actually recognized his face through the glare. 'It looked like the freaking Fourth of July out there.' He was a beefy, powerful man with no tolerance for BS and an amazing capacity to keep his temper under control. He was a perp's nightmare, hell on wheels with a heart for the innocent that knew no natural bounds.
Sloane knelt amidships as the helmsman feathered the throttle and brought the craft within inches of the jetty and kept it there without actually touching the riprap. That had to be Lexus Guzman. She was the only deputy with such a deft hand on the helm.
'Hell if I can figure it out,' I replied to Sloane as I climbed aboard the inflatable.
'Doc, you smell like manure,' Lexus said as she moved the inflatable away from the jetty.
'Good evening to you too, Lexus,' I replied. Her real name was Carolina; she'd come from a well-to-do family with a vineyard down near Ensenada and had shown up for work the first day in a bright, shiny new Lexus convertible. And while she had gone on to newer and fancier cars, the nickname Lexus stuck.
We made our way north in the main channel and I filled them in. Overhead, a sheriff's helicopter passed us heading west, then settled into a rock-solid hover above the accident scene at the mouth of the harbor.
'I should give you this,' I said as I tugged the Colt. 45 automatic from my Windbreaker, pulled out the magazine, and ejected the cartridge in the chamber. I held the. 45 upside down dangling with one finger in the trigger guard. Vince made a question with his face.
'I think when they finally pull the wreckage up, they're going to find three bodies and one of them is going to be carrying a slug from this.'
Sloane frowned deeply as he took all this in. Even without pay, I served as a sworn peace officer, which meant I would be placed on administrative leave while Internal Affairs investigated this officer-involved shooting.
'Okay,' Sloane said, his voice heavy with resignation. 'Tell me everything before I have to write it down officially.' He nodded to Lexus, who slowed the inflatable and made a broad, sweeping circle. As I began, a television helicopter thwacked past overhead, the station's call letters prominently illuminated on the tail for
