Angry Buddhist (9781609458867) (22 page)

Chance King is struggling with the top of the peanut butter jar. She watches him grow increasingly frustrated. Unable to open it, the boy hands it to his mother who tells him to wait a moment. Turning her attention back to the Buddha, she tries to unscrew the head. Nothing happens. Chance King again tries to give her the peanut butter jar. She tells him to wait. With the palm of her hand smothering the wooden idol's serene face, she tenses the muscles in her wrists and arms and exerts the maximum amount of pressure she is capable of summoning. After several seconds the Buddha's head twists off like a bottle cap. The torso is hollow and stuffed inside is a thick wad of cash. Her joyful yelp startles Chance King and Princess quickly makes him a peanut butter and jelly on white bread. He devours it while she hurriedly counts the money.

If Odin hadn't smacked her, Princess would have left some for him. Five thousand dollars. She and Chance King can get back to the Philippines.

 

T
he lonesome Bakersfield twang of Merle Haggard fills the truck's cab as Jimmy considers Hard and fate and murder. There is genuine hope in his breast that Hard isn't guilty. As much as he considers his former boss an enemy, he is trying to evolve into someone for whom the concept of enemies is anathema. And even at Jimmy's current nascent level of spiritual development, the rooms of his heart are still not dark enough to wish the fate of a convicted killer on him, Hard in a San Quentin cell, appeals exhausted, waiting for the needle and oblivion.

Desert Hot Springs police headquarters looks just like it did the day he departed nearly two months ago. It's old home week when he gets buzzed pass the security doors, everyone how are you, how's the new job, hello stranger. In the bullpen he sees Arnaldo talking to Glenn Korver who is taking notes on a legal pad. Arnaldo and Jimmy clasp hands, Arnaldo shaking his head, can you believe this? Hard Marvin? Glenn Korver stands and says hello. A short guy in his forties, he's got a widow's peak and a weightlifter's build. He's wearing chinos and a green golf shirt with an eagle on the breast. They greet each other with a firm handshake and blank expressions. Korver ex-military and Jimmy always thought Korver didn't like him because he never served.

Arnaldo tells Jimmy everyone is on the fresh double at the convenience store. Jimmy nods, goes to the coffee pot in the corner, takes a Styrofoam cup and serves himself. Then he pulls a chair up to Arnaldo's desk, sits next to Korver, says: “So?”

Korver taps him on the shoulder. Jimmy looks at him. Korver stands and motions that Jimmy should join him in a sidebar. The two men step away from Arnaldo who pretends nothing unusual is going on.

Korver whispers, “This is my case.”

“I know that, Glenn. I'm just visiting with my friends. Not here to step on your toes.” Glenn Korver thinks about this, but does not seem placated. “The circumstances make me curious.”

Jimmy places himself in the chair next to Arnaldo's desk. Magnanimously indicates Korver should join them. Senses Korver does not appreciate Jimmy's magnanimity, but the man takes the seat next to him. Now Cali approaches, pulls up a chair, sits next to Jimmy, says, “This is gonna blow your doors off,” like nothing happened between them the other night. Jimmy likes the way she's playing it. Cali and Glenn nod to each other. Jimmy makes introductions. He likes that Glenn is not enjoying Jimmy's familiarity with the people and the place. Then he upbraids himself for liking it. This is attachment. Let it go. There is freedom from suffering.

Breathe in, one, two. Breathe out, three, four.

Arnaldo's voice interrupts his self-excoriation: “I get a call around midnight last night. Get up to the #1 Convenience Store on Valley View. Two dead bodies. Hispanic male clerk and a Caucasian female customer, multiple gunshot wounds, both of them, it's a horror show, blood, broken glass, total mess. There's a cell phone on the floor so we open it and right on the screen's a picture of Hard.”

Although Jimmy knows there was a relationship between Hard and the female victim, when he hears this his head jerks back. Arnaldo moves his computer mouse and clicks. Hard's image appears.

“He left her a phone message last night,” Arnaldo says. He moves the cursor to another icon and clicks the mouse. Jimmy listens, trying to sort through the cacophony in his head as Hard's rough, bourbon-fuelled voice can be heard saying
Nadine, you fuckin cunt, I know what you did to Bane and I want you to know you're going to spend the rest of your life looking over your pretty shoulder.

Cali breaks the silence, says, “He has a way with the ladies.” Korver remains stone-faced but the mordant joke gets an appreciative chuckle from Jimmy and Arnaldo.

“The female's name is Nadine Never,” Cali says. “We did a little recon, found out she worked at a tanning salon called Fake ‘n' Bake. The owner told us she was living illegally in a foreclosure in Cathedral City.” Jimmy asks if they've been to the house. “Tossed it a couple of hours ago,” Cali says. “She had a laptop. We're downloading everything now. And there was a dog in a drawer.”

“Really?” Jimmy says with no more than professional interest. “What kind?”

“Yappy little Chihuahua tried to take a piece out of my hand,” Arnaldo says. “Animal control came and got it.”

When Jimmy requests copies of all the files on the victim's computer, Korver interrupts. “I know you got an interest in this, and I respect that,” he says. “But this is my case, Jimmy. I don't want anything going toes up because the judge finds out you had a beef with Hard.”

“I already told you, Glenn.” Jimmy trying to keep the cactus out of his voice. “Wanted to stop by say hi to my friends here at the department.” Korver shrugs, tells him not to worry about it and Jimmy says he definitely won't. To Cali and Arnaldo: “What about the store clerk? This wasn't a drug thing?”

Cali reads off her notes, “Carlos Salinas, forty-five years old, married, four kids, no record. Guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

No point sticking around any longer. Jimmy says goodbye to Cali and Arnaldo, wishes Glenn Korver good luck. While he still has trouble believing Hard is the shooter, his doubts are quickly dissipating. On the way back to Indio he dials Cali. She picks up and Jimmy says I was going to call you today. Sure you were, she says. He asks if she feels like going out again sometime and she tells him she'll have to think about it but he can tell she's joking because a couple of seconds later she suggests tonight. Just before Jimmy hangs up he asks her if she thinks Hard could have completely lost control of himself and shot up the convenience store. She says hell yeah, I do.

 

After his shift, Jimmy goes home, feeds Bruno, showers and changes into jeans, a black tee shirt and a lightweight sports coat. Then he meets Cali at a Korean restaurant in Desert Hot Springs. She's dressed in jeans and a fitted red blouse that hugs her athletic form. There are three silver bangles on her left wrist and her earrings are little gold hoops with a pearl on each one. Jimmy doesn't remember whether he's ever seen her wear jewelry before, or maybe he hasn't bothered to notice. She puts her chin in her left hand when she talks to him, and the bangles find the soft light. Her hair is loose and falls past her shoulders and Jimmy catches himself thinking there might be something going on between them. They eat kimchi and have tofu bowls with beef, Cali takes hers medium, Jimmy spicy. Cali tells him about enlisting in the Army to make some money to pay for college and a brief first marriage to a guy back in Texas. Jimmy tells her about Darleen and how whatever went wrong with that relationship was at least fifty per cent his fault. An hour passes before they find themselves talking about the convenience store killings and for the first time Cali clues him in about her own history with the chief. This doesn't surprise Jimmy who says he's heard these kinds of rumors for years.

“My boss over at the D.A.'s office made a point of telling me not to go near Hard's case.”

“Yeah, well, the dust-up you and him had went public, didn't it?”

“I admire your self control. Didn't file a grievance. Just nearly broke his jaw.” Jimmy laughing now.

“What good would a filing a grievance have done? Then I'm a bitch no other cop wants to work with.”

After dinner they see a movie in Palm Springs, a science fiction story in which a virus sweeps the planet and Bruce Willis has to lead everyone to another solar system, and when that's over Cali asks Jimmy if he wants to come back to her place in Yucaipa, west of the desert.

She lives in a condo on a hill overlooking the freeway, but with the windows closed the place is quiet and the headlights speeding east and west below have a hypnotic effect. The place is a simply decorated one bedroom. There's a table with a glass top that seats four just off the kitchen. The living room has a white sectional couch arranged in front of a television and a bamboo and glass bookshelf that holds decorative plates and vases, a few large books of photographs, a small stereo and a row of CDs. Cali puts on some Sade and pours a cognac for herself, asks Jimmy if he wants one. Then she's embarrassed to have forgotten he quit drinking. He tells her not to worry about it and twirls her around the living room to the music, pulling her close, kissing her neck, inhaling her perfume that smells like night blooming jasmine.

They make love in the bedroom and after her second orgasm Cali shoves her cognac-coated tongue deep into Jimmy's throat, says she could get accustomed to this, then curls up next to him and falls asleep.

He didn't intend to go into Cali's computer but when he couldn't sleep after lying in bed for twenty minutes he got up and walked into the living room. He didn't want to turn the television on because the sound might wake her so he thought he would fool around on the Internet until he was tired enough to go back to bed and drift off. Cali's laptop is on the table just off the kitchen. Jimmy turns it on and waits for it to boot up.

He spends some time on the American Kennel Club site, researching different breeds then visits a German shepherd chat room where he reads some comments but doesn't post anything. He begins to feel fatigued and exits the Internet. When the screensaver, a panoramic shot of the Colorado River in Austin, Texas, returns, Jimmy's eyes drift lazily over the icons. There are thumbnail-sized photographs, several software programs, including ones for taxes and Internet poker, and a folder marked Current Case Files. This would normally present an ethical quandary and Jimmy doesn't like to think of himself as a snoop when he's off duty, but given that he has been summarily blocked from participating in what might have been the biggest case of his career, his curiosity eats like battery acid against the membrane of his self-control. What the hell, he figures Cali would do the same thing. He checks that she is sleeping soundly then opens the file.

It does not take him long to figure out that Cali has downloaded the contents of Nadine Never's hard drive on to her laptop. Jimmy begins scrolling. There are credit card bills that show restaurants, nail salons, waxing treatments, supermarkets, pet stores, and pharmacies. There are several PDF files of bank statements, the most recent one indicating that Nadine had a little over two thousand dollars in a savings account at the time of her death.

He scans through files of Nadine's, sees she's bookmarked several tennis sites. There are pictures, snapshots of Nadine with friends by the beach, in the hills above San Diego with the Pacific Ocean in the background. There are pictures of her playing tennis. There are countless pictures of a little dog that Jimmy recognizes as a Chihuahua. He finds a file of an on-line application to a reality show, and several files about sailing and the Pacific Northwest. She was not a user of social networking sites, which was too bad for Hard since they might have been a fecund source of suspects. He is almost ready to go back to bed when he sees a file marked Travel. Jimmy clicks it open and sees there are some video tours of resorts far above Nadine's financial means in places like Bali, the kind that feature bungalows suspended over sparkling azure waters and cost thousands of dollars for a single night. There is a bill for a weekend at a budget hotel in Las Vegas. There is a boarding pass for a flight to San Francisco. There are two more boarding passes, both for Cabo San Lucas. One of them is for Nadine Never, the other for Kendra Duke: Delta Airlines, flight #4753, Seats 14A and 14B, from LAX.

Jimmy assumes Cali knows the contents of Nadine's computer and has chosen not to share that knowledge. He doesn't blame her, but still, he doesn't like it. Indeed, this information in Jimmy's hands represents a slight conflict of interest. He knows departing after sex is not good form but he needs to figure out what to do and lying awake the entire night at her condo is not conducive to clear thought.

He glances around the room. There is a portable printer on a bookshelf. Again he checks on Cali. Satisfied she is still sleeping soundly Jimmy makes a copy of the boarding pass with his sister-in-law's name on it. The moment before he is about to turn the computer off, it occurs to him that there might be another emerald to be discovered in the mine of Nadine's computer and this thought puts him back in the chair. Another half hour of rummaging through the files turns up nothing of interest, but when he discovers a file of photographs taken during the Mexican holiday he is buoyed. There is his sister-in-law on the beach in a bikini. There she is holding a tennis racquet and standing to the side of a court, palm trees in the background. There she is in a restaurant wearing sunglasses and drinking a margarita. There she is in front of a Mexican tattoo parlor. There she is in a hotel room with her yellow pastel skirt hiked, finger pointing to a tattoo of a cartoon kitten rendered on the canvas of her naked ass. And there she in standing next to Nadine. Both women have their backs to the camera. Both women are wearing nothing but thongs. He notices they are kissing before he sees that Nadine has the same cartoon kitten tattooed in the exact same place. He wonders if Randall knows about this. And considers whether or not to tell him. It would be awkward. And awkward would really be the least of it. Jimmy knows this picture could put his brother in Mary Swain's crosshairs and she won't let go of the trigger until the fusillade kills him twice. Then there are the legal ramifications. A woman with whom Randall's wife appeared to be sexually involved turns up dead right before an election. At the very least, should this get out, people are going to ask uncomfortable questions. Jimmy knows one thing: the karmic wheel is bearing down on Randall Duke.

“Cali.” Jimmy kneels by the side of the bed, a gentle hand on her soft shoulder. “I can't sleep. I'm gonna drive back to my place.”

“Mmmm,” she says, eyes closed. “Okay.”

When he leans in to kiss her on the mouth she turns away and his lips brush her cheek. He tells her he'll call tomorrow but she's already asleep.