L a Requiem (1999) (18 page)

The private simply stood there, may be seeing Aimes, maybe not, and Aimes was disappointed. Usually the spiel he just pitched got a smile out of them, but this one just stood there.

"Force Recon training is the hardest training in this man's Corps, or any other. We run twenty miles a day in full packs. We do more push-ups than Hercules. We learn how to see in the dark like a buncha muthuh-fuckin' ninjas and how to kill the enemy with the power of our minds alone and I wanna know how come you ain't smilin', Private,'cause this is the funniest shit anybody ever laid on your ass!"

Still no reaction.

Horse was behind the private, shaking his head and grinning again. Told you so, the grin was saying.

Aimes sighed, then uncrossed his big arms and stepped behind Pike so that he could roll his eyes. Horse was damn near busting a gut back there, trying not to laugh. "All right, young man. I may not be Flipfuckin' Wilson, but Gunnery Sergeant Horse, who is as fine a warrior as I know, none finer, thinks you just might have what it takes to be one of my young men, and I think he might be right."Aimes came around the other side of Pike and stopped in front of him, only now Aimes had taken anything even remotely humorous from his eyes and carefully folded it away. "The gunnery sergeant says you're good at hand-to-hand."

Nothing again, and Aimes wondered why this boy said so little. Maybe he just came from people who didn't say much.

Aimes unsnapped his fighting knife from its Alice sheath. He held it out handle first to the boy. "You know what this is?"

The blue eyes never even went to the knife. "It isn't a K-Bar."

Aimes considered his knife. "The standard Corps issue K-Bar fighting knife is a fine weapon, none finer, but not to a warrior such as myself."He twirled the knife across the backs of his fingers. "This is a handmade fighting dagger, custom-made to my specifications by a master blade maker. This edge is so goddamned sharp that if you cut yourself the asshole standing next to you starts to bleed."

Horse nodded, pursing his lips knowingly as if truer words had never been spoken.

Aimes flipped the knife, caught its tip, then handed it to the boy, who held it in his right hand.

Aimes spread his hands. "Try to put it in my chest."

Pike moved without the moment's hesitation that Aimes expected, and he moved so damned blurringly fast that Aimes didn't even have time to think before he trapped the boy's arm, rolled the wrist back, and heard the awful crack as the wrist gave and the boy went down on his back.

The boy did not grimace, and he did not say a word.

Aimes and Horse both made a big deal, helping the kid to his feet, Aimes feeling just horrible, feeling like a real horse-shit donut for pulling a bush stunt like that when the private put those blue eyes on him and said, "What did you do?"Not to accuse or blame, but because he wanted to know the fact of it.

Aimes helped the young Marine into the back of the jeep, telling him, "That was an arm trap. It's something they do in a fighting art called Wing Chun. A Chinese woman invented it eight hundred years ago."

"Woman."The boy almost seemed to nod, not quite but almost, thinking it through. He didn't seem bothered at all that Aimes had just broken his wrist. He said, "You used me against me. A woman, smaller, would have to do that."

Aimes blinked at him. "That's right. You were driving forward. I trapped that energy and used your own momentum to roll your hand over and toward you."

The boy looked down at his hand as if seeing it now for the first time, and cradled it.

Aimes said, "Christ, you're fast, boy. You're so damned fast it got a little away from me. I'm sorry."

The boy looked back up at Aimes. "You teach stuff like that in Recon training?"

"It's not part of our normal syllabus, but I teach it to some of the men. Mostly we learn ground navigation, escape and evasion tactics, ambush techniques. The art of war."

"Will you teach it to me?"

Aimes glanced at Horse, and Horse nodded, his job now done. He got behind the jeep's wheel and waited.

Aimes said, "Yes, Marine. You come over and become one of my young men, I'll make you the most dangerous man alive."

The young Marine didn't speak again until they were at the infirmary, where, infilling out the accident report, Aimes took full and complete responsibility for the injury. What the boy said to him then was, "It's okay you hurt me."

That evening, still feeling nauseated from guilt, Aimes and Horse practiced the art of unarmed war in the Pendleton gym with an ugly ferocity that left both men bloody as they desperately tried to burn away their shame. Later, they drank, and later still Leon Aimes confessed all to his wife, as he always did whenever one of his young men was injured and he felt responsible, and she held him until the very small hours of the dawn.

As a warrior and a man, Leon Aimes was above reproach, none finer.

Eight days later, PFC Pike, Joseph, no middle initial, completed Advanced Infantry Training even with the broken wrist, graduated with his class, and was reassigned to the Force Recon Company for additional schooling. He was rotated to the Republic of Vietnam in the waning years of the United States' involvement in that war. Leon Aimes followed the young Marine s progress, as he did with all of his young men, and noted with pride that Private Pike served with distinction.

There were none finer, just as Leon Aimes always said.

Chapter 15

Pike phoned to tell me that Frank would see us at three that afternoon. I passed the word to Dolan, who said, "I'm impressed, World's Greatest. I guess you're kinda useful."

"Are you going to call me that, Dolan?"

"Beats some other things that come to mind."

These cops think they're such a riot.

When I arrived, Frank Garcia's home was as still as a sleeping pit bull and just as inviting. No cop brass now, no city councilman; just a mourning old man and his housekeeper. I wondered if Frank would see the lie in my eyes, and thought that maybe I should borrow Pike's sunglasses.

I parked in the shade cast by one of the big maples to wait for Pike and Dolan. The tree and the neighborhood were so silent that if one of the fat green leaves fell you would hear it hit the street. The devil wind was gone, but I could not escape the feeling that it was only resting, hiding in the dry, hard canyons to the north to gather its strength before clawing back through the city from a surprising and unexpected direction.

Pike arrived a few minutes later, and got into my car. "I saw Dersh."

Anyone else would be joking, but Pike doesn't joke. "You saw Dersh. You spoke with him?"

"No. I just saw him."

"You went over there just to look at him."

"Mm."

"Why on earth did you go see him?"

"Needed to."

"Well, that explains it."

You see what I have to deal with?

Dolan parked her Beemer across the street. She was smoking, and dropped her butt on the street after she got out of her car. We climbed out to meet her.

"What does he know?"

"He knows what I know." He. Like Pike wasn't there.

Dolan considered Joe for a moment, then wet her lips. "Can you keep your mouth shut?"

Joe didn't respond.

Dolan frowned. "Well?"

I said, "You got your answer, Dolan."

Dolan grinned at Pike. "Yeah. I heard you don't say much. Keep it that way."

Dolan walked on ahead of us toward the house. Pike and I looked at each other.

"She's on the tough side."

Pike said, "Mm."

The housekeeper let us in, and led us to the living room. She glanced nervously at Dolan as we went, almost as if she could sense that Dolan was a cop and that there might be trouble.

In the living room, Frank was staring out the French doors at the pool and the fruit trees where the stone lions prowled. It had been only three days since I'd seen him, but his skin was pasty with a drunk's sweat, his hair was greasy, and the air was sharp with BO. A short glass, now empty, rested in his lap. Maybe it had to be that way when you lost your only child.

Pike said, "Frank."

Frank gazed at Dolan without comprehension, then looked at Joe. "Is Karen all right?"

"How much have you had to drink?"

"Don't you start that with me, Joe. Don't you start that."

Joe went over and took the glass. "This is Detective Dolan, the one I told you about. She needs to ask questions."

"Hello, Mr. Garcia. I'm sorry for your loss." Dolan held up her gold detective's shield.

Frank squinted at the badge, then considered Dolan almost as if he was afraid to ask the thing he most wanted to know. "Who killed my daughter?"

"That's why I'm here, sir. We're trying to find out."

"You people been on this for a week. Don't you have any idea who did this?"

It couldn't have been more pointed than that.

Dolan smiled gently, telling him that she understood his pain, and perhaps even shared it. "I need to ask you about some people that you or Karen might've known."

Frank Garcia shook his head, but when he spoke we could barely hear him. "Who?"

"Did Karen know somebody named Julio Munoz?"

"Is that the bastard who killed her?"

"No, sir. We're contacting everyone in Karen's Rolodex, but four names have outdated numbers. We want to ask about their last contact with Karen, what she might've said, things like that." Dolan was good. She told her lie smoothly and without hesitation as if it were an absolute fact.

Frank seemed annoyed that this small reason was all there was to it. "I don't know any Julio Munoz."

"How about Walter Semple or Vivian Trainor or Davis Keech? Karen might've known them in school, or maybe they worked for you."

"No." You could see he was trying to remember, and was disappointed that he couldn't.

"Karen never mentioned them to you?"

"No."

Dolan said, "Mr. Garcia, when I moved out of my parents' house, I left boxes of things behind. Old school things. Old pictures. If Karen left anything like that here, could I look at them?"

He wheeled just far enough around to see his housekeeper. "Maria, take her back to Karen's mom, par favor."

I was following Dolan when Frank said, "I want to see you guys for a minute."

He waited until Dolan disappeared through the big doorway, then lowered his voice. "She knows more than she's telling, and I'll bet my last tortilla those people she asked about aren't what she said. Keep an eye on her back there. See if you can't get her to let on what she's really after."

I guess a man doesn't go from being a stonemason to a multimillionaire by being an idiot.

Joe stayed with Frank, but I followed the hall until I came to Maria, waiting for me outside a door.

"Gracias, Maria. We'll be fine."

I stepped into what had been Karen's room, and in a way still was. A teenager's furniture froze the room in time. Books and stuffed animals and posters of bands that hadn't existed for a dozen years made the door a time portal taking me into the past. A Flock of Seagulls. Jesus.

Dolan was thorough. Except for old clothes and the knick-knacks young women collect, there wasn't much left in the room, but we spent almost three hours going through high school and college notebooks, high school yearbooks, and the bits of a life that accumulate in the shadows of a child's room. Other than clothes, the closet was a floor-to-ceiling wall of board games. Parcheesi, Monopoly, Clue, Life. We opened every box.

Maria brought Mexican iced tea at one point, sweet with lime and mint. We found more boxes under the bed. Most of them held clothes, but one was filled with notes and letters from a pen pal named Vicki Quesada that Karen had had during her first two years at UCLA. We skimmed every letter, looking for the four names, but found none of them. I felt a kind of distance, reading the letters, until one of them mentioned Joe. The date put it about the time Karen was a sophomore. Vicki had written that Joe sounded really hot, and she wanted Karen to send a picture. I smiled. "That Joe."

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

Dolan frowned and touched her waist. "Oh, shit."

"What?"

"I'm being paged. Goddamnit, it's Krantz. I'll be right back."

Dolan took her purse and left the room.

I finished going through the letters, and found six more references to Joe, the next being that Joe was "soooo cute" (she'd gotten the picture). The letters were organized by date, so were easy to follow, but most of the references were questions: What's it like dating a policeman? Aren't your friends nervous around him? Does he take you for rides in the car? The first two or three references made me smile, but the last references didn't. Vicki wrote that she was sorry things weren't working out with Joe, but that men were bastards and always wanted what they couldn't have. In the last letter that mentioned him, she wrote, "Why do you think he loves someone else?"