The Color of Light (20 page)

“Damn straight, bro. When did you last see Larry?”

“Saturday afternoon,” Beto said. “He drove Father John to our party and waited out front. I went out and asked him to come in, but he said he wasn't in a party mood.”

“What time did Father John leave?”

“You're kidding, right?” Beto turned enough in his chair to give Kevin a snarky look. “You know how many people came and went Saturday? Well I don't. And I sure as hell didn't play time keeper. All I can say is that Father John wasn't feeling very well so he didn't stay long; he prayed, ate, and ran.”

“He left before Jean-Paul and I arrived,” I said. “Don't ask me the time, but the sun was still up.”

Kevin asked Max next: “Where were you Saturday night?”

“After I got Maggie and Jean-Paul home from that shoot-'em-up in Oakland Saturday afternoon, I took BART into San Francisco. Stayed over with friends and came back yesterday.”

“How well did you know Larry Nordquist?”

Max just shrugged. “Never met the guy. Only time I ever saw him was this morning, in the Dumpster.”

“Any more questions, Mr. Cop?” Beto asked, good humor returning.

“Yes, one.” Kevin flipped to a clean notebook page and clicked open his pen and faced Beto. “You said you were at the deli when Zaida called you.”

“I was,” Beto said. “Elbow deep in sliced pastrami.”

“And you didn't bring us lunch?”

“Fuck you, bro.” Beto, grinning now, snatched up Kevin's notebook and tossed it at his chest. “I don't cater this sort of shindig. But I tell you what, Kev. Let your guys know that today only, if they come into the store and mention your name, I'll give them ten percent off their meal.”

“Such a deal,” Kevin said, turning to me. “Junior here normally gives the boys a thirty percent discount and free drinks.”

“Are you two finished?” I asked. When they looked my way, I asked Beto, “How's your dad?”

“The ultimate diagnosis is, he's old and worn out. Doc thinks he had a transient ischemic attack, probably not his first. Could have an aneurysm. His chances for a major stroke before Christmas are excellent. While they have him, they're evaluating him for Alzheimer's and other dementia,” Beto said. “But at the moment, except for some spaciness and cuts and bruises he got when he fell, he feels pretty good and he likes the nurses, even if he can't remember their names.”

“We should all hope to go the way Maggie's dad did,” Kevin said. “He sat down to take a nap and just never woke up.”

“Halloran?” Max furrowed his brow. “What's the possibility this Nordquist idiot climbed into the Dumpster for a snooze and got hit in the head by something that was thrown in on top of him?”

Kevin held up his hands. “Not my question to answer.”

That scenario didn't seem likely to me. I turned to Max. “I didn't see anything piled atop the sleeping bag that covered Larry that could have cleaved his head so cleanly and so deeply. Not through the padding of the sleeping bag. For what it's worth, I know that sleeping bag did not come out of our house.”

Max covered my hand with his. “You okay?”

I shrugged; yes and no.

“Kevin,” I said to get his attention. “Father John has been looking after Larry. Has anyone contacted him?”

“Dunno.” He pulled out his phone and hit speed dial, asked that question of whoever answered, explained briefly who Father John was and his relationship to Larry, and volunteered to notify the padre. He said, “But, sir,” a few times and got no further with whatever he wanted to interject into the conversation. He seemed deflated when he put the phone away.

He met my eyes. “The chief hasn't sent anyone to inform Father John. There will be more questions for you later, but they can wait. Do you want to go with me to talk to John?”

“I want to go, yes,” I said, checking the time on the wall clock; Father John should still be serving soup. “But not with you. You said the media are already here. Under the circumstances, the two of us shouldn't be seen in public together.”

When he started to protest, I said, “There are TVs in the psych unit, Detective.”

Kevin suddenly seemed to fold down into some deep, dark place.

Beto leaned in close to him. “Kev?”

After a long sigh, Kevin said, “The chief took me off the case. He says I'm too close to it.”

“Hard to argue that one,” Beto said. “What's that about the psych unit?”

Kevin ignored Beto's question. “Chief said I have enough on my plate right now to take on a new case. The bastard.”

He glared at me and Max. “I did what you guys told me I should do. I told the chief everything.”

“I didn't say it would be easy, did I?” Max said.

Kevin hung his head. “Damn, if she even sees me coming out of this house.”

“Who?” Beto's focus bobbed from person to person, like a spectator at a three-man tennis match. “What psych unit? Do you mean Lacy? But she's in rehab, right?”

“I'll tell you about it later,” Kevin said.

“Okay. But what about Father John?” Beto said. “Someone, a friend, needs to tell him. ”

I turned to Max. “Will you go with me?”

“Be honored,” he said. “Okay with you, Halloran?”

Kevin nodded. “Probably better if he hears it from you. But he's still down in Oakland. How are you going to get there? The street out front's totally blocked. If we start moving cars out of the way so you can get that red Caddy out, you're going to have every asshole holding a camera jamming it in your face. I don't think you want that.”

I turned to Beto. “If the street's blocked, how'd you get here?”

“In the store delivery van,” he said. “But I had to park a couple of blocks away and hike up the hill.”

“You, walk?” Kevin patted Beto's round front. “At least something good happened out of this mess.”

“Beto,” I said. “Do you remember the secret way into my backyard?”

“Yeah.” If he was feeling a bit out of the loop before, he was thoroughly mystified now.

“Do you think you could still get out that way?”

He glanced down at the roundness Kevin had patted. “Got a ladder?”

Kevin rose and tugged on Beto to get him up. “I'll give you a boost.”

“Where are we going?”

“We're going to get your van. Maggie and Max can take it down to Oakland. On the way, they'll drop us off at the store where you're going to make me a great big pastrami sandwich and I'm going to tell you all my troubles.”

On his way toward the back door, Kevin pulled out his phone and told someone we were leaving.

I glanced at Max's shoes to make sure his had rubber soles, saw that they did, and asked, “You ready?”

“Lead on, McDuff.”

We went out to the back corner of the yard, behind Mom's vegetable garden. One summer while my family was away on vacation, with Beto's help, Kevin, an amorous youth, had sawn through the back crossbeams of a two-foot-wide section of the redwood fence that surrounded the yard, and installed crude hinges. A hard push at the right place would open a piece of the fence wide enough for the boys to sneak through. That was the easy part.

To get to the back side of the fence, the boys first had to navigate their way up a narrow, concrete-lined rainwater run-off channel that ran between the backyards on my side of the street and the backyards behind ours, cross a weir where a second run-off channel intersected, and crawl through a culvert. The prize at the end of the obstacle course, if the boys were successful, was a little unchaperoned outdoor summer evening hanky-panky with their girlfriends; Beto was dating Sunny Loper from next door at the time, a situation her parents did not approve of.

And so, many years and quite a few pounds later, the four of us were going to run that course.

With surprisingly little effort, Kevin managed to pull the panel open on its rusty hinges.

Max looked through the opening and down into the run-off channel beyond with more than a little skepticism. He turned to me.

“Now I know why my brother was so worried about that boy.”

I had to smile, remembering how earnest Kevin had been on his mission to lose his virginity.

“You know what Mike would say?” I asked. “Love is a hurting thing.”

“That may not be all that hurts by the time this is over.” Max followed Kevin through the opening, paused and grinned back at me. “Always an adventure with you, kid. Always an adventure.”

The passageway outside
the Oakland church basement door was packed with shopping carts, every one of them heaped with someone's worldly goods: bedding, clothes, green trash bags full of cans and bottles redeemable for cash. A marmalade cat groomed herself in the sun atop the pile in one cart while a tired old mutt slept in the shade under another. A rich, human effluence filled the air as we made our way through the jumble.

The church ladies were just finishing with lunch service in the big fellowship hall. A few stragglers among their customers lingered over coffee, some in conversational groups, others off by themselves except for maybe the voices in their heads. A ragged man with a long, tangled beard played
Rhapsody in Blue
on the old upright piano at the far end of the room. The piano needed tuning, but he played with such expression, such beautiful phrasing that Max and I paused to listen before we went in search of Father John.

“He said he needed to sit down for a minute,” a woman clearing a table told us. “You might go up and check in the sanctuary. He enjoys the solitude there after the worst of the noise down here is over for the day.”

We found the sanctuary easily enough, but not Father John. The vast chamber was lit only by sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows on the east side of the chancel, very pretty, but not very useful. It took a moment for our eyes to adjust, but when they did we still saw no John; I had expected to find him on his knees before the chancel rail. I was about to suggest that we look elsewhere when I heard a little snore. We walked down the center aisle looking into the pews on either side until we found him, stretched out, his apron wadded under his head for a pillow. I sat down next to his feet and gave the toe of his sneaker a shake.

He awoke with a snort, seemed disoriented for a moment after he opened his eyes wide. Still lying on his back, he said, “Tell me I didn't die in my sleep and here's an angel come to take me away.”

Max laughed. “No such luck, Padre.”

John raised his head to look around me for the source of that voice. When he saw it was Max, he sat up and swung his feet to the floor.

“Well if it isn't that old sinner, Max Duchamps.” He offered his hand to my uncle. “Good to see you, friend.”

“Been a while,” Max said. He nodded toward the altar. “You do realize this is a Presbyterian church, John.”

Father John, smiling, shrugged, good-naturedly dismissive. “Last I heard, the Presbyterians were Christians in good standing. They also made their commercial-grade kitchen available to feed the hungry, so who am I to quibble?”

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

“Oh, sure.” He rubbed his cheeks. “The chemo knocks me out sometimes. I have found that a house of worship on Monday mornings is just about the quietest place in town to catch a few Zs.

“So?” He turned an accusatory eye on me. “You told me you were too busy to help with lunch, but here you are. What brings you, child?”

I felt tongue-tied. I had delivered the sort of bad news I had come to give him before, but it does not get easier. Ever. I managed to say, “It's about Larry Nordquist.”

“Not good news, I fear, about my AWOL cook.”

“Father John.” I put my arm around his shoulder. “Larry's body was found this morning. He probably passed away sometime Saturday night.”

“Ah.” A shaft of blue light crossed his face as he looked up, crossed himself. A set of rosary beads appeared out of his pocket, wrapped around his hand. After a moment, as if speaking to no one in particular, he said, “I knew when I didn't see him for a while that something had happened to him, but I didn't expect that. No, not that. Not that.”

We sat in the sepulchral quiet of the sanctuary for a bit before Father John let out a long breath.

“An accident?” he asked.

“It doesn't look that way,” I said. “And not by his own hand.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

Max asked, “Do you know how to get in touch with his family?”

“I do.” After another contemplative breath or two, he rose to his feet. “Can you give me a lift back to the rectory? There are calls to make.”

For the trip back to Berkeley, I conceded the passenger seat of Beto's delivery van to Father John and climbed into the back. I upended a plastic milk crate, folded a shop rug to use as a cushion, and made a seat of sorts in the pass-through space between the two front seats. It was a familiar enough arrangement. From time to time, on weekends when I was in high school, if Bart needed servers for an event he was catering, Beto would press a few of his friends into service and we would ride to the event in the back of the van with the food. Bart worked us hard but he paid us well; I remembered it being fun.

The service pans and trays that had been used to deliver Hungry Ghosts party leftovers to the soup kitchen, now empty and carefully washed, were stowed on a shelf near the back door, ready for return to Beto's deli. The pans and trays rattled around a bit, but overall, the short trip wasn't unduly uncomfortable or unpleasant.

Max broke the silence that had settled over the cab. “John, how do you handle the weight of all the secrets you have to keep?”

Father John thought for a moment. “The confidences of the confessional don't belong to me. I pass messages on to the boss upstairs and counsel the sinner to repent. And to fix his mess.”

“Can you really do that, just hand it off?”

Father John shook his head. “Not always. Sometimes what I hear makes my heart feel heavy. Hell, sometimes what I hear curls my toes. Why do you ask, counselor? Is something weighing on you?”

“At any given moment? You bet,” Max said with a sardonic little chortle. “Lordy, the crap I hear from my clients. But my job isn't fixing them or saving their immortal souls. All I have to do is represent their issues before the law. Sometimes, though, it's damn hard to sit by and do nothing when I'm told something that could really help someone out, but I can't say a damn word.”

Father John reached across the space between their seats and clamped a hand on Max's shoulder. Smiling, he said, “Have you tried going to confession, my son, to unburden your soul?”

Max laughed. “I gave that up a long time ago, Padre.”

“If I put a couple of easy chairs and a bottle of good scotch in the confessional, counselor, would you give it a try?”

“I might.” Max reached back and tapped my knee. “What are your plans tonight?”

“Jean-Paul is flying in,” I said. “So you're relieved of duty.”

“So, John,” Max said. “You up for a steak dinner?”

“I know just the place,” Father John said. “Pick me up at seven.”

We dropped off Father John at the rectory and headed down Shattuck. As soon as we pulled the van into its parking space in the alley behind the deli, Beto started making lunch for Max and me. Kevin was already gone, and the lunch-hour crowd was beginning to thin. Max and I found a table near the front windows and sat down.

“How was it riding in back, Maggie?” Beto asked as he set pastrami on rye in front of us. He uncorked a frosted bottle of prosecco and poured it into three tall flutes; it had been that kind of a day.

“It was nostalgic,” I said, clinking my glass to his as he pulled out the chair next to Max. “Like the old days, when we went on jobs with your dad. Do you still do catering?”

“Oh, sure. More, actually. We cater a lot of lunch and breakfast meetings at Cal and Rotary, that sort of thing. When Dad still had the place alone, because those gigs always come at slam time here in the store, all he could ever do was drop off food platters and run back to work the counter. By the time I came aboard, he was already slowing down, so catering pretty much stayed status quo. But once our kids were in school, Zaida took over that end of the business, and she's done a fantastic job, really grown it. She brought in Auntie Quynh to make desserts and help serve. If it's a really big event, she hires her friends to do the serving, just like in the old days when Dad hired us on weekends. Now they have all the business they can handle.” Beto grinned. “I'm so proud of her.”

“That's just great,” Max said. “Really great.”

“It is,” I said. I remembered that his mom used to work in the store during the lunch-hour rush. She'd see Beto off to school, and then she'd walk over; Mrs. B never drove a car.

“Any new word on your dad?” I asked Beto.

He shook his head.

“I'll go over and see him this afternoon sometime.”

“He'd like that,” he said. “Look, if you're going to the hospital, could you do me a big favor? Dad asked for a couple of things, but Zaida and Auntie are busy getting ready for a dinner gig and I can't get away until closing. If you'd go by the house and get a bag for him, it would be a big help. Auntie will be at the house frosting cakes until four.”

“I'm happy to help,” I said.

My phone buzzed; it was Kevin, so I stayed where I was and took the call.

He asked, “You get Father John squared away?”

“We did. He's going to call Larry's family.”

“I'll tell the chief.”

“You're really off the case, then?”

“Yeah.” There was a pause. “Hey, Maggie, the D.A. is filing charges against Lacy for the shooting. Arraignment is scheduled for Wednesday.”

“That's rough,” I said. “Max is here. Do you need him?”

“No, but thanks. He put me on to a good local guy. On the advice of Max, we've started the process of getting Lacy formally committed to a long-term program. Her seventy-two-hour hold runs out tomorrow. We want her to be inside when the papers are served.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

“You'll be called to make a statement.”

“I don't have much to tell, Kev. I didn't see who shot at us.”

“They might ask you about some other things, too.”

“We'll worry about that if it happens.”

“Yeah. Hey, maybe I should have a word with Max.”

“Hold on.” I handed the phone to Max and he walked outside with it.

Beto picked up his empty plate and stood. “Let's hope they can keep Lacy in the hospital long enough this time to do her some good.”

With that, he walked away to tend to customers.

I finished my sandwich, visited the ladies' room, and came back to find Max waiting for me.

“The cops are sending a car to drive us back to the house,” Max said.

“Where's Larry?” I asked.

“He's at the morgue. The crime analyst took the Dumpster somewhere they can comb through everything in it, so the police are finished at the house.”

“Bless their hearts,” I said, fighting to keep the pastrami down as I envisioned the forensic technicians going through everything in that putrescent iron box. I hoped they had good face masks and gloves.

A police cruiser pulled up outside and we said our good-byes to Beto. When we drove up to the front of the house, I looked at the mess left behind by police, gawkers, and media folks with dismay. The flower borders I had been so careful to protect from truck wheels all morning had been churned underfoot. I said a silent apology to my dad, and called Tosh Sato for advice. Right off, Mr. Sato asked about the Chrysler roses that formed the outer red band of Dad's rainbows of flowers.

“Ground to confetti,” I said.

When he finished swearing, he gave me instructions for gathering the remains and putting them in water; maybe he could salvage cuttings. He'd be over in the morning with some new plants. We could not restore the borders to their former glory, but we could make them presentable.

While Max headed inside the house to make sure all was secure, I pulled on Dad's heavy leather rose-trimming gauntlets and did as instructed, gathered the broken, thorny remains of the roses and set them in buckets with water. I thought of my dad, digging in the dirt, his mind light-years away as he worked through some thorny physics conundrum or another, searching for patterns, always searching for patterns.

I got out the big shop broom and began sweeping up the plant mess. No longer lined up in tidy color tiers, their petals were all in a jumble, the way bands of visible light might look if they were disassembled by a shattered prism.

It occurred to me that no one except my family would understand the significance of Dad's planting pattern. Sure, they made a pretty rainbow, but why they made a rainbow had meaning only for us, the targets of Dad's lessons about the optical spectrum. Any sort of plant would do to replace them, because the house's tenants would likely not care about the terahertz waves in the color blue. Or red, or yellow, or...

“Dammit, Dad,” I muttered. Still carrying the broom, I ran through the garage and stood in the middle of the backyard, looking at the intact rainbow flower borders, the rose beds, the climbing vines on trellises, the vegetables, and I swore again.

I called out, “Max!”

He came out the back door with a phone to his ear. As he walked toward me, he held up a finger for me to wait while he finished his call.

“I'm afraid to ask,” he said, pocketing his phone. “But what now?”

“Tell me what you see?”

He shrugged, surveyed the yard. “Grass, flowers, green beans and tomatoes.”

“I should have asked, what don't you see?”

Looking around again, he said, “I need a hint.”

“White,” I said. “You don't see white.”

I pointed to the closest flower border, raging with midsummer color, and said, “R, O, Y, G, B, I, V.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Okay, I get it. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet—the colors of the visible spectrum. And no, of course you don't
see
white. White has no hue, it is the sunlight itself.”

“Dad put you through the color drill, too, did he?”