Self-Defense (59 page)

There were other places like it, all over
the city.

Newspapers, especially those in the
cold-weather zones, love to portray L.A. as a Balkanized smog-blinded armed
camp with no more substance than a sitcom and no more altruism than a
politician. It’s not any closer to the truth than a lot of the other stuff in
the papers.

Sherrell Best was packing along with his
parishioners, distinguishable as the leader only because he had to break to take
frequent phone calls.

He came over to us. “This is a wonderful
person.”

Lucy blushed. “Saint Lucretia.”

“The kind of good she’s created has to
come from a beautiful soul, Dr. Delaware.”

“I know.”

“Please,”
said Lucy, placing a packet of cookies into the box.

“Wonderful,” said Best. “Can I steal the
good doctor from you for a second, Lucy?”

“Only if you bring him back.”

He took me into a cubbyhole office and
closed a particle-board door that didn’t cut out much of the noise. On the wall
were some of the same type of biblical pictures he’d had in his kitchen.

“I just wanted to thank you for all you’ve
done,” he said.

“It was my pleas—”

“It was exceptional, the way you stuck by
her. She’s blessed to have met you and so am I.” He gave me a troubled look.

“What is it, Reverend?”

“You know, for a time I thought if I ever
found what happened I’d take the law into my own hands. The Bible exhorts
against revenge, but it also permits the Blood Redeemer his due. There were
times I thought I’d do something terrible. My faith was lacking.”

Tears filled his eyes.

“I could have been a better father. I
could have given her money so she didn’t need to—”

“Stop,” I said, putting a hand on his
shoulder. “I’m no Solomon, but I know the difference between a good father and
a bad one.”

He cried some more, softly, then snapped
out of it. Drying his eyes, he took my hand in both of his. “How selfish of
me—so much work to be done. Always hunger.”

I returned to the packing line.

Lucy’s hands moved like a weaver’s at a
loom. She was trying to smile but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “Guess I’ll
be seeing you at the beach tomorrow.”

“Here, too,” I said. “I think I’ll stick
around for a while.”

The End

A Ballantine Book

Published by The Ballantine Publishing
Group

Copyright © 1997 by Jonathan Kellerman

All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The
Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Ballantine and colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

eISBN 0-345-46372-2

This edition published by arrangement with
Random House, Inc.

To my
daughter Ilana,

a fine and
magical mind, a sweet soul,

and, always,
music

Turn the page
for an excerpt from
Jonathan Kellerman’s
new Alex Delaware novel

A COLD HEART

Available in
hardcover

from Ballantine
Books

The witness remembers it like this:
  Shortly after two
A.M.
, Baby Boy Lee exits The Snake Pit
through the rear alley fire door. The light fixture above the door is set up
for two bulbs, but one is missing, and the illumination that trickles down onto
the garbage-flecked asphalt is feeble and oblique, casting a grimy
mustard-colored disc, perhaps three feet in diameter. Whether or not the
missing bulb is intentional will remain conjecture.

It is Baby Boy’s second and final break of
the evening. His contract with the club calls for a pair of one-hour sets. Lee
and the band have run over their first set by twenty-two minutes because of
Baby Boy’s extended guitar and harmonica solos. The audience, a nearly full
house of 124, is thrilled. The Pit is a far cry from the venues Baby Boy played
in his heyday, but he appears to be happy, too.

It has been a while since Baby Boy has
taken the stage anywhere and played coherent blues. Audience members questioned
later are unanimous: Never has the big man sounded better.

Baby Boy is said to have finally broken
free of a host of addictions, but one habit remains: nicotine. He smokes three
packs of Kools a day, taking deep-in-the-lung drags while on stage, and his
guitars are notable for the black, lozenge-shaped burn marks that scar their
lacquered wood finishes.

Tonight, though, Baby Boy has been
uncommonly focused, rarely removing lit cigarettes from where he customarily
jams them: just above the nut of his ’62 Telecaster, wedged under the three
highest strings.

So it is probably a tobacco itch that
causes the singer to leap offstage the moment he plays his final note, flinging
his bulk out the back door without a word to his band or anyone else. The bolt
clicks behind him, but it is doubtful he notices.

The fiftieth Kool of the day is lit before
Baby Boy reaches the alley. He is sucking in mentholated smoke as he steps in
and out of the disc of dirty light.

The witness, such that he is, is certain
that he caught a glimpse of Baby Boy’s face in the light and that the big man
was sweating. If that’s true, perhaps the perspiration had nothing to do with
anxiety but resulted from Baby Boy’s obesity and the calories expended on his
music: For eighty-three minutes he has been jumping and howling and swooning,
caressing his guitar, bringing the crowd to a frenzy at set’s end with a fiery,
throat-ripping rendition of his signature song, a basic blues setup in the key
of B-flat that witnesses the progression of Baby Boy’s voice from an inaudible
mumble to an anguished wail.

There’s women that’ll mess you

There’s those that treat you nice

But I got me a woman with

A heart as cold as ice.

A cold heart,

A cold, cold heart

My baby’s hot but she is cold

A cold heart,

A cold, cold heart

My baby’s murdering my soul...

At this point, the details are unreliable.
The witness is a hepatitis-stricken, homeless man by the name of Linus Leopold
Brophy, aged thirty-nine but looking sixty, who has no interest in the blues or
any other type of music and who happens to be in the alley because he has been
drinking Red Phoenix fortified wine all night and the Dumpster five yards east
of the Snake Pit’s back door provides shelter for him to sleep off his
delerium
tremens
. Later, Brophy will consent to a blood alcohol test and will come
up.24, three times the legal limit for driving, but according to Brophy “barely
buzzed.”

Brophy claims to have been drowsy but
awake when the sound of the back door opening rouses him, and he sees a big man
step out into the light and then fade to darkness. Brophy claims to recall the
lit end of the man’s cigarette glowing “like Halloween, you know—orange, shiny,
real bright, know what I mean?” and admits that he seizes upon the idea of
panhandling money from the smoker. (“Because the guy is fat, so I figure he had
enough to eat, that’s for sure, maybe he’ll come across, know what I mean?”)

Linus Brophy struggles to his feet and
approaches the big man.

Seconds later, someone else approaches the
big man, arriving from the opposite direction—the mouth of the alley, at Lodi
Place. Linus Brophy stops in his tracks, retreats into darkness, sits down next
to the Dumpster.

The new arrival, a man, also good-sized,
according to Brophy, though not as tall as Baby Boy Lee and maybe half of Baby
Boy’s width, walks right up to the singer and says something that sounds
“friendly.” Questioned about this characterization extensively, Brophy denies
hearing any conversation but refuses to budge from his judgement of amiability.
(“Like they were friends, you know? Standing there, friendly.”)

The orange glow of Baby Boy’s cigarette
lowers from mouth to waist level as he listens to the new arrival.

The new arrival says something else to
Baby Boy and Baby Boy says something back.

The new arrival moves closer to Baby Boy.
Now, the two men appear to be hugging.

The new arrival steps back, looks around,
turns heel and leaves the alley the way he came.

Baby Boy Lee stands there alone.

His hand drops. The orange glow of the
cigarette hits the ground, setting off sparks.

Baby Boy sways. Falls.

Linus Brophy stares, finally builds up the
courage to approach the big man. Kneeling, he says, “Hey, man,” receives no
answer, reaches out and touches the convexity of Baby Boy’s abdomen. He feels
moisture on his hand and is repelled.

As a younger man, Brophy had a temper. He
has spent half of his life in various county jails and state penitentiaries,
saw things, did things. He knows the feel and the smell of fresh blood.

Stumbling to his feet, he lurches to the
back door of the Snake Pit and tries to pull it open, but the door is locked.
He knocks, no one answers.

The shortest way out of the alley means
retracing the steps of the newcomer: walk out to Lodi Place, hook north to
Fountain and find someone who’ll listen.

Brophy has already wet his pants twice
tonight—first while sleeping drunk and now, upon touching Baby Boy Lee’s blood.
Fear grips him and he heads the other way, tripping through the long block that
takes him to the other end of the alley. Finding no one on the street at this
hour, he makes his way to an all-night liquor store on the corner of Fountain
and El Centro.

Once inside the store, Brophy shouts at
the Lebanese clerk who sits reading behind a Plexiglass window, the same man
who one hour ago sold him three bottles of Red Phoenix. Brophy waves his arms,
tries to get across what he has just seen. The clerk regards Brophy as exactly
what he is—a babbling wino—and orders him to leave.

When Brophy begins pounding on the
Plexiglass, the clerk considers reaching for the nail-studded baseball bat he
keeps beneath the counter. Sleepy and weary of confrontation, he dials 911.

Brophy leaves the liquor store and walks
agitatedly up and down Fountain Avenue. When a squad car from Hollywood
Division arrives, Officers Keith Montez and Cathy Ruggles assume Brophy is
their problem and handcuff him immediately.

Somehow he manages to communicate with the
Hollywood Blues and they drive their black and white to the mouth of the alley.
High-intensity LAPD-issue flashlights bathe Baby Boy Lee’s corpse in a
heartless, white glare.

The big man’s mouth gapes and his eyes are
rolled back. His banana-yellow Stevie Ray Vaughan t-shirt is dyed crimson and a
red pool has seeped beneath his corpse. Later, it will be ascertained that the
killer gutted the big man with a classic street-fighter’s move: long-bladed
knife thrust under the sternum followed by a single upward motion that slices
through intestine and diaphragm and nicks the right ventricle of Baby Boy’s
already seriously enlarged heart.

Baby Boy is long past help and the cops
don’t even attempt it.

THE HIGHEST PRAISE FOR

JONATHAN KELLERMAN’S

SELF-DEFENSE

“Crackling dialog and sharp
characterizations... [Kellerman] whisks us through the labyrinthine plot with a
brisk, driving style.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“With its nicely orchestrated twists,
Kellerman’s plot will keep readers guessing.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Author Jonathan Kellerman came up big
winners with his last two novels....
Self-Defense
makes it a three-peat.”

—
Detroit Free Press

“Often, mystery writers can either plot
like devils or create believable characters. Kellerman stands out because he
can do both. Masterfully.”

—
USA Today

“Kellerman’s in his usual fine form, and
his latest Alex Delaware adventure is sure to be every bit as popular as its
predecessors.”

—
Booklist

Please turn the page to read more about

the novels of Jonathan Kellerman....

WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS

In this, the first of the bestselling Alex
Delaware novels, the child psychologist explores a seven-year-old girl’s
subconscious, seeking clues to a brutal homicide that only she witnessed.

“An exceptionally exciting thriller!”

—
The New York Times