Silent Partner

You’ll be delivered safe and sound. Try to enjoy the ride.”

“Why don’t I feel reassured?”

More laughter, dry and forced. “Doctor, it’s been stimulating. Who knows, we may meet again one day- another party.”

“I don’t think so. I hate parties.”

“To tell the truth,” he said, “I’ve tired of them myself.” He turned serious. “But given even a slim chance that we do come face to face, I’d appreciate it if you don’t acknowledge me. Invoke professional confidentiality and pretend we’ve never met.”

“No problem there.”

“Thank you, Doctor. You’ve comported yourself as a gentleman. Is there anything else?”

“Lourdes Escobar, the maid. A true innocent victim.”

“Compensation’s been made in that regard.”

“Dammit, Vidal, money can’t fix everything!”

“It can’t fix anything,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, during the time she lived in the States, half of her family was wiped out by the guerrillas. Same death, no compensation. Those who survived were tortured, their homes burned to the ground. They’ve been granted immigration papers, brought over here, set up with businesses, given land. Compared to life itself, admittedly feeble, but the best I can offer. Any additional suggestions?”

“Justice would be nice.”

“Any suggestions about improving the justice that’s been meted out?”

I had nothing to say.

“Well, then,” he said, “is there anything I can do for you?”

“As a matter of fact, there is a small favor. An arrangement.”

When I told him what it was, and exactly how I wanted it done, he laughed so hard it plunged him into a coughing attack that bent him double. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth, spat, laughed some more. When he pulled the handkerchief away, the silk was stained with something dark.

He tried to talk. Nothing came out. The men in black looked at each other.

He finally found his voice again. “Excellent, Doctor,” he said. “Great minds moving in the same direction. Now, let’s attend to that hand.”

37

I was dropped off on the University campus. Pulling the blindfold off, I made my way home on foot. Once inside my house I found I couldn’t tolerate being there, threw some things into a bag, and called the exchange to say I’d be going away for a couple of days, to hold my calls.

“Any forwarding number, Doctor?”

No active patients or pending emergencies. I said, “No, I’ll check in.”

“A real vacation, huh?”

“Something like that. Goodnight.”

“Don’t you want to pick up the messages that are already on your board?”

“Not really.”

“Oka-ay, but there’s this one guy who’s been driving me crazy. Called three times and got rude when I wouldn’t give him your home number.”

“What’s his name?”

“Sanford Moretti. Sounds like a lawyer- says he wants you to work on a case for him or something like that. Kept trying to tell me you’d really want to hear from him.”

My reply made her laugh. “Doctor Delaware! I didn’t know you used that kind of language.”

I got in the car and drove away, found myself heading west, and ended up on Ocean Avenue, off Pico. Not far from the Santa Monica Pier, which had closed up for the night and darkened to a knurled clump of rooftops over a thatch of bowed pilings. Not far from the (vulgar) Pacific, but no OC VU on this block. The sea breeze had taken leave; the ocean smelled like garbage. The street hosted beer-and-shot bars with Polynesian names and “day-week-month” motels given a wide berth by the auto club.

I checked into a place called Blue Dreams- twelve brown, salt-smudged doors arranged around a parking lot badly in need of resurfacing, the neon tubes in the VACANCY sign cracked and drained of gas. A pasty-faced biker-hopeful with a dangling crucifix earring manned the front desk- doing me the favor of taking my money while making love to a slab of fried catfish and staring at a California Raisins commercial. Candy and condom machines stood side by side in the shoulder-cramping lobby, along with a pocket-comb dispenser, and the California Penal Code’s reflections on theft and defrauding an innkeeper.

I took a room on the south side, paying for a week in advance. Nine by nine, insecticide stink- no gnats here- a single narrow, filmed window exposing a slice of brick wall turned mauve by reflected streetlight, mismatched wood-grain furniture, skinny bed under a spread laundered to dishwater-colored fuzz, pay TV bolted to the floor. A quarter in the pay slot yielded an hour of fizzy sound and jaundiced skin tones. There were three quarters in my pocket. I tossed two out the window.

I lay on the bed, let the TV run down, and listened to noise. Bass thumps from the jukebox of the bar next door, so loud it seemed as if someone was being hurled against the wall in two-four time; angry laughter and truncated street-talk in English, Spanish, and a thousand undecipherable tongues, canned laughter from the TV in the adjacent room, toilet flushes, faucet hisses, movement cracks, door slams, car horns, a scatter of sharp reports that could have been gunshots or backfires or the sound of two hands applauding. And backing it all, the Doppler drone of the freeway.

An Overland symphony. Within moments I was robbed of twelve years.

The room was a sweatbox. I stayed inside for three days, subsisting on pizza and cola from a place that promised to deliver hot and cold and lied about both. For the most part I did what I’d been avoiding for so long. Had pushed away by chasing the inadequacies of others, throwing down cloaks over mudholes. Introspection. Such a prissy word for scooper-dips deep into the wellspring of the soul. The scooper honed sharp and jagged.

For three days I went through all of it: rage, tears, tension so visceral my teeth chattered and my muscles threatened to go into tetany. A loneliness that I would have gladly anesthetized with pain.

By the fourth day I felt sapped and placid, was proud I didn’t mistake that for cure. That afternoon, I left the motel to keep my appointment: a sprint down the block to the sidewalk paper rack. The remaining quarter down the hatch and the evening edition was mine, gripped tightly under my arm, like pornography.

Bottom left of page one, complete with picture.

L.A.P.D. CAPTAIN CHARGED WITH SEXUAL MISCONDUCT RESIGNS

Maura Bannon

Staff Writer

A Los Angeles police captain, accused of having sexual relations with several underage female Police Scouts while on duty, resigned today after a police disciplinary board recommended dismissal.

The three-member Board of Rights panel ordered Cyril Leon Trapp, 45, terminated immediately from duty and recommended retroactive loss of all L.A.P.D. pensions, benefits and privileges. In accordance with what both Trapp’s attorney and a police spokesman described as a negotiated settlement, Trapp agreed to register as a sex offender, forfeit appeal of the board’s decision, sign an affidavit agreeing never again to work in law enforcement, and pay “substantial financial restitution, including full fees for medical and psychiatric treatment” to his victims, suspected of numbering over a dozen. In exchange, no criminal charges are being filed, an alternative which theoretically could have included indictments for statutory rape, narcotics abuse, sexual abuse of a minor and multiple misdemeanors.

The offenses to which Trapp pleaded no contest, took place over a five-year period during