Halfway House (2 page)

The mother sees the soldiers come upon her daughter and the dark-eyed man, soundlessly slitting their throats, then moving on up the hill toward the artillery batteries.

She watches in horror as her daughter’s blood pumps into the land. The birds flock to her, first hundreds, then thousands. They feel her form and allow her to control their minds, understanding that she is of the land, the land they live on, feed on, and call home. They beat their wings as they move to her commands, a thousand tiny minds feeling her anger, the grief and the loss. At her will, they become monstrous.

The men halt when they hear the tumultuous crashing of the wings. They search the sky, but can’t see into the darkness. Even the stars are hidden. As the sound grows louder, their fear grows until their steps tremble along the ground.

The moment that her rage takes shape, a guard from Battery Farley fires a flare into the air, the red rocket sun backlighting her new nightmarish form to the intruders.

As one, the men scream.

But that is only the beginning.

She has learned some terrible things in her life, things she’d never thought she would duplicate.

But that was before they murdered her only child.

And these things she does are most terrible.

Most terrible, indeed.

The crash of surf was as welcome a sound as Bobby Dupree had heard in a long time. He and Kanga had spent the day hoofing it from Long Beach, through the port city cesspool of Wilmington, finally arriving back in San Pedro, all in a fruitless search for a replacement board. They’d gone from surf shop to surf shop, even trolling the secondhand stores, and twice Bobby thought the old man had found what he’d wanted. But each time he’d left grumbling about this defect or that stress crack, invisible to Bobby, whose surfing expertise began and ended at the ocean’s edge.

Kanga’s board had been crucified on the rocks of Rat’s Cove during a freak current two days ago, and ever since the man had been morose with loss. It had finally taken Bobby, and Kanga’s daughter Laurie, to convince him that a replacement board could be found. Not one of the new, mass-produced, fiberglass monstrosities that every Tom, Dick and Surfer Harry threw on the roof racks of their mommy’s station wagons, PT Cruisers, or wanna-be-retro new VWs, but some throwback, soul-engineered surf machine lost in the dust of a back-alley shop, just begging to twist and cry on the crest of a wave once more before it died a heady death.

The problem was that nothing could replace Kanga’s 1964 Dextra Gun with its red, yellow and green psychedelic swirls, which he’d won in a contest in Santa Cruz in ’76. Such a board was irreplaceable, not only because of its undeniable quality, but because of the inculcated memories attached to every dive into every wave that came after.

Still, Kanga and Bobby looked.

In all the shops they’d gone to, the only boards that Kanga had decreed fitting were a 1962 Santa Cruz Challenger longboard with a Bahne fin and a 1968 mint green Velzy. But when he’d seen the prices, each nearly a thousand dollars of money neither of them had, Kanga declared the journey over and began the forced march back to Jap’s Cove where his beach shack stood against the sheer cliff face of the California Coast.

The sun had set into a cloud bank east of Catalina Island. Stopping only for a bag of burritos from Tony’s and a case of Tecate beer from the Lighthouse Mini Mart, they felt glad to be getting home. Even Kanga turned and flashed a grin, his teeth starkly white against a tan so permanent it was like a nut-brown stain. He and Bobby picked their way along the trail leading from the International Youth Hostel, past a gated trailer park, and along a scenic overlook.

Kanga had used this beach shack for twenty years now, stopping there whenever he passed through Los Angeles. The sanctuary had once been miles from civilization’s edge, but every year the tide of humanity crept closer. The day that the Yuppies found reason to overrun the shack was the day he’d vowed never to return. Bobby glanced at the new homes being built along the hills of Rancho Palos Verdes and knew it was only a matter of months before they settled out here.

Kanga held up a hand, halted, and crouched. Bobby slid the box of beer and food into the thigh-high grass beside the trail and duck walked over to Kanga. Electric guitar riffs of Los Straitjacket’s
Rockula
twisted up the path ahead of the onshore breeze. A golden glow brightened the otherwise black night. Bobby smelled the smoke of the fire.

“Come on, kid. Let’s see who dropped in.” Kanga’s voice promised violence.

Bobby had learned that
dropping in
was a surfer’s worst crime, meaning to take a wave when another already owned it. In this case, there were no waves, but the beach shack was just as important. For Bobby, even more so, since his bags were there. They contained all his research on his birthright, which was what he’d come to Southern California to find before hooking up with Kanga.

Wearing long, peach-colored pants and a T-shirt from Bell’s Cove in Australia, the fifty-five-year-old Kanga reached up and knotted his long white hair to keep it out of his face. The muscles in his arms twisted and bulged. A lifetime of surf bumming on three continents had chiseled the old man’s features into those of a twenty-five-year-old. Only his gray hair and a stubborn, but small, pot belly made from years of burritos and beer were evidence of his age.

Kanga frowned once more as someone cranked Sterno to painful decibels, speakers spitting the rapid-fire surf guitar like an underwater machine gun. Wary of being seen, he moved in a quick half crouch down the path.

Bobby, dressed in his typical blue jean cutoffs, Memphis Barbecue T-shirt with sleeves removed, and tennis shoes, scrambled down the slope behind him. He’d seen Kanga take on a college-aged surfer the day his board had been smashed, when he’d gotten
mullered
after the punk had dropped into his wave. Three smartass remarks from the Laguna Beach preppy and Kanga had front-kicked the boy’s sarcasm down into his throat. It took both the boy’s friends to help him up the slope and back to their Beemer. Before they sped off to mommy and a trust fund, Kanga had made it clear that they weren’t allowed back to the coves, ever.

At the bottom of the path, Kanga sidestepped a mound of rotting seaweed and peered around a cement retaining wall. In a few moments he straightened and brought his face close to Bobby’s.

“There are four of them,” Kanga whispered. “Three guys and a girl. Looks like they made themselves at home.”

Bobby felt a twinge of anger. Other than the orphanage, this was the only other place he could possibly call home. To have someone in it made him madder than he thought he’d be. He realized he’d attached a certain amount of ownership to the thatched-roof dwelling. Built on an immense concrete slab, the beach shack was all open air, with two old couches facing the ocean, and raised benches ringing the sides and rear, doubling as places to sit or sleep. Stout support poles stolen from construction sites held up a roof frame constructed of PVC piping. Interwoven throughout the frame were palm fronds that had been liberated from the yards of upscale Rancho Palos Verdes estates, now laid in such a way that any rainfall sluiced off.

“What do you want to do?” Bobby asked.

“I want to kick their asses. But that might be unneighborly. Maybe they just want to crash.”

“We need a signal. Something like snapping your fingers so I know when it’s time to fight.”

“Sounds good. Stick behind me, kid. I don’t want you getting all beaten and bruised. Laurie would have my hide.”

Before Bobby could deny there was anything going on between him and Kanga’s daughter, the older man stepped out and strode toward the raging bonfire in the rock pit before the shack. Bobby hurried after him.

Beside the fire were two shirtless men drinking beers. A woman and a third man sat together on the nearest couch, kissing slow and long like they had a lifetime to do it. The men by the fire saw them first. The one with long red hair, a goatee, and a pair of yellow Hobie shorts stood first.

The other man followed, leaping to his feet right after. Whereas the red-haired man was tall and lean, this one was built like a Pit bull: shaved head, thick neck, broad chest, with shotgun biceps. He flexed his arms and began opening and closing his hands.

Kanga made it about halfway when the red-haired man shouted something that was lost to the waves.

The man on the couch stood, his fragile body birdlike as it swayed slightly in the onshore breeze. His head was also shaved, but he was thinner than the other, like a junkie, his arms almost girlish in their lack of musculature.
Too
thin. Bobby remembered a loner at the rail yard in Kansas City who’d once warned him against thin men.
“They’ve used something up inside them,”
the old man had drawled, his voice caught somewhere between whiskey nights and beating screams. “
I see them all the time. Them that are too thin need something you don’t want to give. Drugs. Food. Sex. You don’t know, and you don’t want to know.
”

The man’s face was his resume. A wicked long scar tortured his right cheek, drawing his lips into a permanent smile. Teardrop tattoos dripped one, two, three from his left eye. Ex-con. The teardrops could represent murders he’d committed, friends who’d been killed in prison, or any combination of the two.

Bobby shivered slightly as he hastened to keep up with Kanga. Surely the old man had seen the tats. This guy was a killer. Maybe he and Kanga should just get their stuff and move on down the beach. Bobby had spent enough of his life roughing it in the elements that one more night wouldn’t matter. He moved to say something, but Kanga beat him to it.

“Ho there.” He raised his right hand in the air and held it there—from Roman to knight to surfer, the symbol for weaponless conference hadn’t changed in two millennia.

“We gave at the office, old man,” the red-haired man giggled. He had a tattoo of Woody Woodpecker across his chest. By the way he giggled, it was no mystery why. He glanced at the thin man, then hushed as the other made a silencing gesture with a downward slice of his hand.

“That’s far enough,” the stocky boy growled, his fists still wringing invisible necks.

Kanga marched to within two feet of him and stopped. He didn’t make eye contact. His focus was on the thin man. From this distance he couldn’t miss the teardrops. Bobby hurried to a stop just to the left and behind Kanga. He finally saw the girl, her doped eyes moving dully above a princess nose and pouty lips. She seemed the type to be more at place in a mall chasing sales than here in a beach shack, in the dark of night, and on the edge of culture. The thin man’s right hand rested on her shoulder proprietarily. She grasped it, pressing it to her cheek.

Junkie, indeed.

Bobby suddenly understood the relationships of the four in front of him: junkie, dealer, and hoods.

“Nice place you got here.” Kanga smiled as he said it, but his humorless voice wasn’t lost on the thin man.

“A little damp, but we call it home.”

“And who might you be?”

“Why don’t you introduce you and your friend?” the thin man countered. “It’s not polite to come into someone’s home and demand their names.”

Kanga made a fist. The pit bull focused on it, ready. But then he opened it and continued. “I’m Kanga and this is my friend Bobby. Say hi to the nice men, Bobby.”

“Hi.”

“So you’re the famous Captain Kangaroo.” The thin man strode to the front of the shack. Three steps and six feet of sand separated him from Kanga. But the movement was void of any threat of violence. For the first time the lips on the left side of the thin man’s face matched the right, and he smiled.

“So you know me?” Kanga said.

“I thought you’d be older,” the thin man replied.

The redhead giggled. “And fatter.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Bobby wanted to circle around, but knew he couldn’t move without distracting the two hoods. He glanced at the sand, wishing it was good old-fashioned pavement. He always seemed to move like a drunk in the sand, the constant shifting of the granular material keeping him just off balance. He looked at the human pit bull, whose eyes were pinned on Kanga’s hands. The man might as well have been the dog.

“It always happens that way,” the thin man said. “It’s a special moment in time when you match the face with the legend. Sadly, they never seem to fit. You live up to your disappointment.”

“If you know me, then you know this is my place.”

“Yeah. We know.”

“Then what do you want?”

“To deliver a message.”

“From who?”

“Marley Macklin.”

“I haven’t heard that name in twenty years.”

“You wouldn’t have,” the thin man said, his voice getting tight. “He doesn’t get around much anymore.”

Silence for a ten count.

“What does he want with me?” Kanga asked.

“If you don’t know, then you aren’t Captain Kangaroo.”

“Ahhh.” The word came like the sound of a body releasing its last breath. “It’s like that, is it?”