Shame (37 page)

“Oh, I can name that tune, sugar. All of us with our shame. All of us built up like porcupines. Reminds me of that question: How do porcupines make love?”

“I don’t know.”

“Very, very carefully.”

Caleb didn’t laugh, but she didn’t expect him to. “The only creatures that got to be more careful than porcupines,” Lola said, “are us two-legged kind.”

She was right, Caleb thought, right about lots of things. It did feel as if they were going into war. That explained their talking like this. No one wanted to die alone. And neither one of them wanted to die that night.

“There’s this part in the Bible,” said Caleb, “where Jesus says, ‘And if thine right eye offends thee, pluck it out.’ I always wished I could do that, just pluck out all my bad parts. But then I wasn’t sure if I’d be left with any good parts.”

The car slowed down. “I’m turning on Prospect,” Caleb announced. “Parking’s always tough around here.”

Getting closer to the war, Lola thought. He was evidently thinking the same thing.

“Can you give me that gun?” Caleb asked.

He listened to her rummage through her bag, then saw her arm come out from under her blanket with the gun.

“It’s loaded?”

“Yes.”

He stuck the weapon in his coat pocket, and they drove in silence until Caleb found a place to park the car.

“Showtime,” he said.

The crowds were out in downtown La Jolla, lots of beautiful people wearing expensive clothing, out to see and be seen.

It feels surreal walking the streets, Caleb thought. No one else knew about his war. They were too busy window shopping and laughing to notice him. He knew how Lola had felt going out in drag for the first time, was sure he was experiencing the same feelings of exposure and uncertainty. He was the Bogeyman, had been on the front pages of all the newspapers and beamed out at these people from their television sets, but he was passing among them like a ghost.

Caleb tried straightening his coat before walking into The Top Hat. He wasn’t dressed for the restaurant. Lola had done the best she could with his shirt, had mended it and tried to wash out the bloodstains, but they were still visible if you looked closely. His chin was bandaged and his face scraped from his run-in with the asphalt, and he needed a shave. Caleb could see his dark stubble in the reflection of the glass front door. His five o’clock shadow contrasted starkly with his newly blond hair.

The interior of the restaurant had a lot of burnished wood and stained glass, but people weren’t there for the atmosphere so much as the panorama below. Top Hat diners had prime viewing spots of La Jolla Cove and the Pacific Ocean, and the patrons were taking advantage of their aerie, gazing at the ocean while sipping their drinks and nibbling on their shrimp cocktails. No one appeared to notice him, save for the hostess.

Caleb cut off her pleasantries, merely told her, “I’m waiting for someone,” then took a seat.

“Perhaps you’d like to wait in our lounge, sir...”

“No.” Caleb turned his back on her, not giving her another glance. He didn’t take in her name tag or the color of her hair or anything about her. For her sake he ignored her. He remembered his brief encounter with Brandy Wein and how that had been enough to condemn her.

It was 6:25. Caleb had arrived five minutes early. Time passed, each second making him more jumpy. He tried not to be a clock watcher, tried to resist looking at his watch, but found he couldn’t hold out for long. Every time the phone rang it gave him a start. He was looking at his watch when the phone rang again.

The way the hostess was talking, Caleb knew it wasn’t another reservation call. “Why, yes,” she said. “I think he’s sitting here. Mr. Gray?”

Caleb acknowledged the name. He took the phone from her, put it to his ear.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Feral said, “but you know how time passes when you’re having fun.”

“No,” Caleb said, “I don’t.”

“I stopped to chat with Elizabeth. I wish I could have stayed a little longer with her. I told her I’d be borrowing her cell phone for a few more hours. She didn’t
voice any objections
.”

His emphasis was supposed to be cluing Caleb to her condition. He was telling him that she was unconscious, or gagged, or dead.

“I want you to take a walk,” said Feral, “a little stroll down to La Jolla Cove. There’s a gazebo at the park there. It’s right across from the lawn.”

“Walking’s hard for me,” Caleb said. “I had an accident last night.”

“I think the exercise will do you good. You know what they say about people who don’t exercise—they’re at risk, and by extension so are their loved ones.”

Caleb didn’t respond to the threat.

“You’ll find further instructions at the gazebo. I’d hurry if I were you.”

The line went dead.

Caleb cut through the La Valencia Hotel, taking its courtyard pathway down to the cove. He tried to be on alert, aware of everything going on around him. As he crossed Coast Boulevard, he sensed that he was passing over a demarcation line, an upstairs-downstairs division that had the rich above and the hoi polloi below.

The cove wasn’t crowded, but the air was pungent with smoke from fires and barbecues. Caleb took the roundabout way, following the pathway along the rocks. He stopped to tie his shoe and glanced back to see if anyone was following him. No one. But he was still sure he was under surveillance. The only people near him were two tide-poolers probing with a flashlight to see what the retreating tide had left behind. As Caleb rounded the
bend, he encountered Frisbee players tossing their discs under the lights. Their boom boxes were positioned around the park, and techno vied with pop as he passed through. Dogs barked—or they might have been sea lions. Caleb knew the sea mammals liked to gather on the rocks around the cove. The end of daylight had brought the surfers in but hadn’t closed the door on all ocean sports. Several night dives were taking place. The scuba divers themselves were mere shadows, their outlines only hinted at by the glow of their underwater green lights.

Caleb felt like one of those divers. He was having to work his way through darkness, and his illness made it seem as if he was doing everything in slow motion. A mist was hanging along the coast, light but building. The shroud seemed to cling to Caleb, hanging on to him. He tried to fight off the illusion but wished he had one of those green diver’s lights. They reminded him of a wizard’s scepter. That’s what he could use, a magical wand....

I should have taken more aspirin, Caleb thought. His forehead was beginning to burn again. He couldn’t lose it, not now.

Someone was in the gazebo. Caleb reached for the gun. There, he thought, touching the metal. The gun would serve him better than any wizard’s scepter. He didn’t pull it out but kept his fingers gripped around it. He crept closer to the gazebo, willing himself to be invisible, imagining himself as part of the fog.

Fever talking, he thought.

Inside the gazebo the shadow was moving, twisting. It was like some huge goddamn snake. Caleb took out his gun and stepped inside the structure.

A couple looked up. Young, no more than fourteen. They stopped their kissing, interrupted by a man with a gun. They were terrified, mouths open, eyes wide and panicked.

Caleb put his gun away. He didn’t know what to say. Further instructions were supposed to be in the gazebo, but what kind of instructions?

“Was something left here for me?” he asked. “Some kind of package?”

Drugs. He could tell that’s what they immediately assumed. And with his sweaty face and dazed manner, Caleb knew he probably looked like the most demented of dope fiends.

“There wasn’t any package,” the boy managed to say.

Caleb searched the darkened structure anyway, the boy and girl silently huddling together in the corner. Then he went outside and began examining the exterior of the gazebo. If he hadn’t been looking for the envelope, he wouldn’t have seen it, tucked as it was under one of the side eaves. As he reached for it, Caleb remembered the other envelope, the one with the pictures of Brandy Wein in it. His heart started racing. He pulled the envelope down and was glad to feel its lightness. That meant no new pictures. The envelope was addressed to Gray Jr. Inside it was a slip of paper on which was written, “Mount Soledad Cross. Fifteen minutes. Seek and ye shall find.”

He heard noises behind him and whirled around. The boy and girl were fleeing the gazebo. His sudden turn made the girl scream.

“It’s all right!” Caleb yelled. “I’m one of the good guys!” He wasn’t sure if that was true, but they didn’t stop to listen anyway.

The fog was rolling in. It looked as if the waves were carrying it ashore. Not twenty feet below him the ocean was pounding the shore. Caleb had an impulse to jump down and bathe his hot head and aching body in its water, but he knew he had to keep moving.

As he started back, Caleb looked for the night divers but couldn’t see them. Their green, guiding lights had gone out.

“I wondered if you were ever coming back,” said Lola.

“Shh,” Caleb said. “He might be watching.”

He started the car and drove off, maintaining the silence until he was sure they weren’t under surveillance.

“We’re on our way to Mount Soledad,” he said.

“To do what?” Lola asked. “Pray?”

The large white cross that stood on the mount’s summit had been a point of controversy for years. Various groups had been lobbying for its removal, saying its presence was a violation of the doctrine of separation of church and state, and that it had originally been erected to warn off non-Christians from the area. Proponents said it was a war memorial and that it had graced the mount for too long to be removed. Everyone agreed it was a symbol, though no one could agree what kind.

“He called me at the restaurant,” Caleb said, “and sent me on a wild goose chase down to La Jolla Cove. That’s where he left instructions for me to go to Mount Soledad. I’m sure he was watching me.”

Caleb opened the window, let the wind whip his wet face. The mist wasn’t only along the coast. It was working its way up the hill.

“Are you hot?” Lola asked.

“Yes.”

She was cold. Freezing.

“You want me to close the window?”

“No.”

“We’re approaching the cross. We’ll have to stop talking now. He might be watching.”

The cross was on an island in the middle of a turnaround. Several cars were parked along the perimeter of the lot, with people taking in the view, making out, or both. Caleb drove around the cross once, slowly, before parking the car.

He sat and waited. No one approached him. The note, Caleb remembered, had read, “Seek and ye shall find.” He opened the car door and walked toward the cross, again afraid of what he might find. The image of Teresa Sanders flashed across his mind. She had been left for him. He tried to not think about her.

Caleb had been atop Mount Soledad one time before, but that had been during the day. He remembered he had been able to see
south all the way to Mexico. Now, with the fog, the viewing was severely limited, but that didn’t make it any less spectacular. The mist softened the world below him, bringing clouds to the earth. It was as if he were looking upon something not quite tangible, like looking at the world through a good dream.

The cross, immense and whitewashed, was bathed in lights. There was a wrought iron fence around it. On one of the metal points, pierced, he found another envelope. Caleb started breathing easier. No body this time, and no pictures. He pulled the envelope down off the spike. It was addressed to “Junior.” There were enough lights illuminating the cross for him to read. The note contained only two words: “Call me.”

“Why is he making us jump through so many hoops?” Lola asked.

Caleb was too exhausted to answer. He was reaching for her cell phone to call, but Lola had this feeling, this premonition, and it frightened her.

“I think he’s creating a trail through her phone records,” Lola said. “He’s purposely making calls from her phone and having you call him back. That makes me believe that Elizabeth’s still alive. And it makes me suspect that he wants her time of death to be the same as yours.”

Lola took the blanket off her head. She needed to breathe. She didn’t want to think anymore, didn’t want to feel what was
out there.
Her second sight had never scared her so. She reached out to take back her cell phone from Caleb.

“Don’t call him,” she said. “Don’t let him know you have a cell phone.”

“Why not?” asked Caleb.

An idea began to form in her head, the beginnings of a plan. “It’s better he doesn’t know you have access to one,” she said. “It’s better to keep him waiting while we think.”

Five minutes later, Caleb called from a convenience store pay phone.

Feral answered on the first ring. “Where are you calling from?” he asked.

“A pay phone down in La Jolla Shores.”

“Close. Or as your children might say, ‘Marco.’”

Caleb bit his lip. He didn’t want the other man to know his agony. But apparently he already did.

“You seem to be sweating an awful lot tonight, Gray. Are you sick?”

Again, no answer.

“Because you look sick. Maybe tonight’s not a good night for our getting together. I don’t want to get the flu or anything.”

“I’ll try not to kiss you.”

Feral hid his annoyance. He was the only one who should be making jokes. But Junior wouldn’t be laughing for long.

“Next stop, Torrey Pines Gliderport. Do you know where that is?”

“No.”

“As the crow flies, it’s directly north of you, not much more than a mile up the coast. But you can’t go that way unless you can fly. It’s a bit of a circuitous path to get to the nosebleed seats, the cliffs. You’ll need to go where eagles dare not perch, where the hang gliders like to step off onto a shelf of air.

“And you’ll need to follow all of my instructions very carefully....”