The Good Guy

Having successfully passed himself off as the man with a dog named Larry, having for the moment spared the life of the woman in the photograph, having avoided the violent confrontation that could have ensued if the killer had realized what had gone wrong, Tim ought to have been relieved. Instead, his throat tightened, and his heart swelled until it seemed to crowd his lungs and crimp his breath.

A brief dizziness made him feel as if he were spinning slowly on the bar stool. Vertigo threatened to revolve into nausea.

He realized that relief eluded him because this incident was not at an end. He didn’t need tea leaves to read his future. He clearly foresaw the prospects for tragedy.

With only a glance at any stone courtyard or driveway, he could name the pattern of the pavement: running bond, offset bond, coursed ashlar, basket weave, Flemish bond…. The pattern of the road before him was chaos. He could not know where it would lead.

The killer walked with a light step that could be achieved only by someone not weighed down with a conscience, and went out into the night’s embrace.

Tim hurried across the tavern, cautiously cracked the door, and peered outside.

Behind the steering wheel of a white sedan parked at an angle to the curb, half veiled by a windshield that reflected the tavern’s blue-neon sign, sat the smiling man. He riffled the packet of hundred-dollar bills.

Tim withdrew his slim cell phone from his shirt pocket.

In the car, the killer rolled down a window. He hung an object on the glass and cranked up the window to hold it in place.

Blindly feeling his way across the cell-phone keypad without looking at it, Tim began to dial 911.

The object pinched between the window frame and the glass was a detachable emergency beacon, which began to flash as the car reversed away from the curb.

“Cop,” Tim whispered, and hesitated to dial the second 1.

He risked stepping outside as the sedan pulled away from the tavern, and he read the license-plate number on the back of the dwindling vehicle.

The concrete underfoot seemed to have no more surface tension than the skin of water on a pond. Sometimes a skating mayfly, eluding birds and bats, is taken by a hungry bass rising from below.

Three

In the downfall of golden light from the dragon lamp, a simple iron railing guarded the rising concrete steps. The concrete had been worked with a screed when it was bleeding, and as a consequence, some edges had scaled badly; some treads were as crazed as crackle-glazed pottery.

Like a lot of things in life, concrete is unforgiving.

Through four framed panels, the copper dragon, still bright but greening at the edges, serpentined against a luminous backdrop of lacquered mica lenses.

In the wash of ruddy light, the aluminum screen door appeared to be copper, too. Behind it, the inner door stood open to a kitchen rich with the aromas of cinnamon and strong coffee.

Sitting at the table, Michelle Rooney looked up as Tim arrived. “You’re so quiet that I felt you coming.”

He eased the screen door shut behind him. “I almost know what that means.”

“The night outside quieted around you, the way a jungle does when a man passes through.”

“Didn’t see any crocodiles,” he said, but then thought of the man to whom he had given the ten thousand dollars.

He sat across from her at the pale-blue Formica-topped table and studied the drawing on which she worked. It was upside-down from his point of view.

Out of the jukebox in the tavern downstairs rose the muffled but lovely voice of Martina McBride.

When Tim recognized the drawing as a panorama of silhouetted trees, he said, “What’s it going to be?”

“A table lamp. Bronze and stained glass.”

“You’ll be famous someday, Michelle.”

“I’d stop right now if I thought so.”

He looked at her left hand, which lay palm-up on the counter near the refrigerator.

“Want a cup?” she asked, indicating the coffeemaker near the cooktop. “It’s fresh.”

“Looks like something you wrung out of a squid.”

“Who in his right mind wants to sleep?”

He poured a mugful and returned with it to the table.

As was true of many other chairs, this one seemed like toy furniture to him. Michelle was petite, and the same kind of chair appeared large under her, yet Tim was the one who felt as if he were a child playing at coffee klatch.

This perception had less to do with chairs than with Michelle. Sometimes, all unaware, she made him feel like an awkward boy.

She finessed the pencil with her right hand, holding the drawing tablet steady with the stump of her left forearm.

“ETA on the coffeecake,” she said, nodding toward the oven, “is ten minutes.”

“Smells good, but I can’t stay.”

“Don’t pretend you’ve gotten a life.”

A shadow danced across the table. Tim looked up. A yellow butterfly fluttered at the silvered hooves of the leaping bronze gazelles in a small chandelier by Michelle.

“It slipped in this afternoon,” she said. “For a while I left the door open, tried to chase it out, but it seems at home here.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

A tree branch whispered into existence between the pencil point and the paper.

“How did you make it up the stairs, carrying all that?” Michelle asked.

“All what?”

“Whatever it is that has you so weighed down.”

The table was the blue of a pale sky, and the shadow seemed to glide behind it, a graceful mystery.

“I won’t be coming around for a while,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“A few weeks, maybe a month.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s this thing I have to take care of.”

The butterfly found a perch and closed its wings. As though the shadow were the quivering dark reflection of a burning candle, it vanished as suddenly as a flame from a pinched wick.

“‘This thing,’” she echoed. Her pencil fell silent on the paper.

When his attention rose from the table to Michelle, he found her staring at him. Her eyes were a matched blue and equally convincing.

“If a man comes around with a description of me, looking for a name, just say the description doesn’t ring a bell with you.”

“What man?”

“Any man. Whoever. Liam will say, ‘Big guy on the end stool? Never saw him before. Kind of a smart-ass. Didn’t like him.’”

“Liam knows what this is about?”

Tim shrugged. He had told Liam no more than he intended to tell Michelle. “Nothing much. It’s about a woman, that’s all.”

“This guy who comes around to the bar, why would he also come up here?”

“Maybe he won’t. But he’s probably thorough. Anyway, you might be down in the bar when he comes around.”

Her left eye, the artificial one, the blind one, seemed to pierce him more thoroughly than did her right eye, as if it were possessed of major mojo.

“It’s not about a woman,” she said.

“It really is.”

“Not the way you’re implying. This is trouble.”

“Not trouble. Just embarrassing.”

“No. You’ll never embarrass yourself. Or a friend.”

He looked for the butterfly and saw it perched on the chain from which hung the gazelle chandelier, slowly flexing its wings in the warm air rising from the incandescent bulbs.

“You don’t have the right,” she said, “to go it alone, whatever it is.”

“You’re making too much of this,” he assured her. “It’s just an embarrassing personal thing. I’ll deal with it.”

They sat in the silence of the stilled pencil, no music on the jukebox in the tavern below, no sound issuing from the throat of the night at the screen door.

Then she said, “What are you now—a lepidopterist?”

“Don’t even know what that is.”

“A butterfly collector. Try looking at me.”

He lowered his gaze from the butterfly.

Michelle said, “I’ve been making a lamp for you.”

He glanced at the drawing of stylized trees.

“Not this. Another one. It’s already under way.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’ll be done by the end of the month. You’ll see it then.”

“All right.”

“Come back and see it then.”

“I will. I’ll come back for it.”

“Come back for it,” she said, and reached out to him with the stump of her left arm.

She seemed to hold tight to him, as if with ghost fingers, and she kissed the back of his hand.

“Thank you for Liam,” she said softly.

“God gave you Liam, not me.”

“Thank you for Liam,” she insisted.

Tim kissed the top of her bent head. “I wish I had a sister, and I wish she was you. But you’ve got this trouble thing all wrong.”

“No lies,” she said. “Evasions, if it has to be that way, but no lies. You’re not a liar, and I’m not a fool.”

She raised her head and met his eyes.

“All right,” he said.

“Don’t I know bad trouble when I see it?”

“Yes,” he acknowledged. “Yes, you know it.”

“The coffeecake must be nearly done.”

He glanced at the prosthesis on the counter by the refrigerator, palm turned up, fingers relaxed. “I’ll get it from the oven for you.”

“I can manage. I never wear the hand when I’m baking. If it burned, I wouldn’t feel it.”

Using oven mitts, she transferred the cake to a cooling rack.

By the time Michelle took off the mitts and turned from the cake, Tim had moved to the door.

“I’ll look forward to seeing the lamp,” he said.

Because her lacrimal glands and tear ducts had not been damaged, both her living eye and the dead one glimmered.

Tim stepped onto the landing at the head of the stairs, but before he let the screen door fall shut behind him, Michelle said, “It’s lions.”

“What?”

“The lamp. It’s lions.”

“I bet it’ll be terrific.”

“If I do it right, you’ll get a sense of their great hearts, their courage.”

He closed the screen door and descended the steps, seeming to make no noise on the scaling concrete.

Gliding by in the street, the traffic surely was not quiet, but Tim remained deaf to its chorus. Headlights approached and taillights receded like luminous fish in the silence of an oceanic abyss.

As he neared the bottom of the steps, the noise of the city began to rise to him, softly at first, but then loud, louder. The sounds were mostly made by machines, yet they had a savage rhythm.

Four

The woman marked for death lived in a modest bungalow in the hills of Laguna Beach, on a street that lacked a money view but that was being gentrified nonetheless. Compared to the aging structures, the land under them had such value that every house sold would be torn down regardless of its condition and its charm, to make way for a larger residence.

Southern California was shedding all its yesterdays. When the future proved to be a cruel place, no evidence of a better past would exist, and therefore the loss would be less painful.

The small white house, huddled under tall eucalyptuses, had plenty of charm, but to Tim the place looked embattled, more bunker than bungalow.

Lamplight warmed the windows. Sheer curtains made mysteries of the rooms beyond.

He parked his Ford Explorer across the street from—and four doors north of—Linda Paquette’s property, at another house.

Tim knew this place: three years old, in the Craftsman style, with stacked stone and cedar siding. He had been the head mason on the job.

The walkway was random flagstone bordered by a double row of three-inch-square cobbles. Tim found this combination unattractive; but he had executed it with care and precision.

Owners of three-million-dollar homes seldom ask masons for design advice. Architects never do.

He pressed the doorbell once and stood listening to the faint susurration of the palm trees.

The offshore flow was less a breeze than a premonition of a breeze. The mild May night breathed as shallowly as an anesthetized patient waiting for the surgeon.

The porch light came on, the door opened, and Max Jabowski said, “Timothy, old bear! What a surprise.”

If spirit could be weighed and measured, Max would have proved to be bigger than his house.

“Come in, come in.”

“I don’t want to intrude,” Tim said.

“Nonsense. How could you intrude in a place you built?”

Having clasped Tim’s shoulder, Max seemed to transfer him from porch to foyer by some power of levitation.

“I only need a minute of your time, sir.”

“Can I get you a beer, something?”

“No, thank you, I’m all right. It’s about a neighbor of yours.”

“I know them all, this block and the next. I’m president of our Neighborhood Watch.”

Tim had expected as much.

“Coffee? I have one of those machines that makes it a cup at a time, anything from cappuccino to plain old plain old.”

“No, really, but that’s very kind, sir. She lives at fourteen twenty-five, the bungalow among the eucalyptuses.”

“Linda Paquette. I didn’t know she was going to build. She seems like a solid person. I think you’d enjoy working with her.”

“Do you know her husband, what he does?”

“She isn’t married. She lives there alone.”

“So she’s divorced?”

“Not that I’m aware. Is she going to tear down or remodel?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Tim said. “It’s a personal matter. I was hoping you’d speak to her about me, let her know I’m okay.”

The bushy eyebrows rose, and the rubbery lips stretched into an arc of delight. “I’ve been a lot of things, but never before a matchmaker.”

Although he should have foreseen this interpretation of his questions, Tim was surprised by it. He hadn’t dated anyone in a long time. He had assumed that he’d lost the telltale glint of eye and had stopped producing whatever subtle pheromones might have allowed him to be mistaken for a man still in the game.

“No, no. It’s not that.”

“She’s easy on the eyes,” said Max.

“Truly, it’s not that. I don’t know her, she doesn’t know me, but we have a… mutual acquaintance. I have some news about him. I think she’ll want to know it.”

The rubbery smile loosened only a little. Max didn’t want to let go of the image of himself as a facilitator of true romance.

Everyone, Tim thought, had seen too many movies. They believed that a meet-cute relationship awaited every good heart. Because of movies, they believed a lot of other improba ble things, as well, some of them dangerous.

“It’s a sad business,” Tim said. “Some depressing news.”

“About your mutual acquaintance.”

“Yes. He’s not a well man.”

This could not be counted as a lie. The skydiver was not physically ill, but his mental condition was suspect; and his moral health had fallen to disease.

Consideration of death relaxed all the delight out of Max Jabowski’s smile. His mouth shrank to a grim shape, and he nodded.

Tim expected to be asked the name of the mutual acquaintance. He would have had to say that he didn’t want to provide it for fear of alarming the woman before he could be at her side to comfort her.

The fuller truth was that he had no name to give.

Max did not ask for a name, sparing Tim from resorting to that deception. Bushy brows beetling now over solemn eyes, he once more offered coffee, and then went away to call the woman.

The coffered ceiling and wood-paneled walls of the foyer were dark, and the limestone floor was so light, by contrast, that the support it provided seemed illusory, as if he might at any moment fall through it like a man stepping out of a plane in flight.

Two small chairs flanked a console, above which hung a mirror.

He did not look at his reflection. If he met his eyes, he would see the hard truth from which he preferred to remain diverted.

Directly met, his gaze would tell him what was coming. It was the same thing that was always coming toward him, that always would be, as long as he was alive.

He needed to prepare for it. He did not need, however, to dwell on it.

From elsewhere in the house arose Max’s muted voice as he spoke on the phone.

Here at the center of the foyer, Tim stood straight, and felt as if he were suspended from the dark ceiling, like a clapper in a bell, with empty air below him, in silent anticipation of a sudden tolling.

Max returned and said, “She’s curious. I didn’t say much, just vouched for you.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“It isn’t any bother, but it is kind of peculiar.”

“Yes, it is. I know.”

“Why didn’t your friend call Linda and vouch for you himself? He wouldn’t have to tell her why he’s sending you around—the bad news.”

“He’s very ill and very confused,” said Tim. “He knows the right thing to do, but he doesn’t any longer know how to do it.”

“That’s maybe the thing I fear the most,” said Max. “The mind going, the loss of control.”

“It’s life,” Tim said. “We all get through it.”

They shook hands, and Max walked him out onto the porch. “She’s a nice woman. I hope this won’t be too painful.”

“I’ll do my best for her,” Tim said.

He returned to his Explorer and drove to Linda Paquette’s bungalow.

The herringbone brick of the front walkway had been laid on a bed of sand. The air was fragrant with eucalyptus essence, and dry leaves crunched underfoot.

Step by step, urgency overcame him. Time seemed to quicken, and he sensed trouble coming sooner rather than later.

As he climbed the front steps, the door opened, and she greeted him. “Are you Tim?”

“Yes. Ms. Paquette?”

“Call me Linda.”

In the porch light, her eyes were Egyptian green.

She said, “Your mama must have had a hard nine months carrying all of you around.”

“I was smaller then.”

Stepping back from the door, she said, “Duck your head and come on in.”

He crossed the threshold, and after that nothing was ever the same for him.

Five

Golden honey poured wall to wall, a wood floor so lustrous and warm that the humble living room appeared spacious, quietly grand.

Built in the 1930s, the bungalow had either been meticulously maintained or restored. The small fireplace and flanking wall sconces were simple but elegant examples of Art Deco style.

The glossy white tongue-and-groove ceiling lowered over Tim, but not unpleasantly. The place felt cozy instead of claustrophobic.

Linda had a lot of books. With one exception, their spines were the only art in the room, an abstract tapestry of words and colors.

The exception was a six-by-four-foot image of a television with a blank gray screen.

“Modern art baffles me,” Tim said.

“That’s not art. I had it done at a photo shop. To remind me why I don’t own a TV.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because life is too short.”

Tim gave the photo a chance, then said, “I don’t understand.”

“Eventually you will. A head as big as yours has to have some brains in it.”

He wasn’t sure if her manner indicated a breezy kind of charm or a flippancy bordering on rudeness.

Or she might be a little screwy. Lots of people were these days.

“Linda, the reason I’m here—”

“Come along. I’m working in the kitchen.” Leading him across the living room, she said over her shoulder, “Max assured me you’re not the type to stab me in the back and rape my corpse.”

“I ask him to vouch for me, and that’s what he tells you?”

As he followed her along a hallway, she said, “He told me you were a talented mason and an honest man. I had to squeeze the rest of it out of him. He really didn’t want to commit to an opinion about your possible homicidal and necrophilic tendencies.”

A car was parked in the kitchen.

The wall between the kitchen and the two-car garage had been removed. The wood floor had been extended throughout the garage, as had the glossy white tongue-and-groove ceiling.

Three precisely focused pin spots showcased a black 1939 Ford.

“Your kitchen is in the garage,” he said.

“No, no. My garage is in my kitchen.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Huge. I’m having coffee. You want some? Cream? Sugar?”

“Black, please. Why is your car in your kitchen?”

“I like to look at it while I’m eating. Isn’t it beautiful? The 1939 Ford coupe is the most beautiful car ever made.”

“I’m not going to argue for the Pinto.”

Pouring coffee into a mug, she said, “It’s not a classic. It’s a hot rod. Chopped, channeled, fully sparkled out with cool details.”

“You worked on it yourself?”

“Some. Mostly a guy up in Sacramento, he’s a genius at this.”

“Had to cost a bunch.”

She served the coffee. “Should I be saving for the future?”

“What future did you have in mind?”

“If I could answer that, maybe I’d open a savings account.”

His mug had a ceramic parrot for a handle, and bore the words BALBOA ISLAND. It looked old, like a souvenir from the 1930s.

Her mug was doubly a mug, in that it was also a ceramic head of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt biting on his famous cigarette holder.

She moved to the ’39 Ford. “This is what I live for.”

“You live for a car?”

“It’s a hope machine. Or a time machine that takes you back to an age when people found it easier to hope.”

On the floor, on a drip pan, stood a bottle of chrome polish and a few rags. The bumpers, grill, and trim glimmered like quicksilver.

She opened the driver’s door and, with her coffee, got behind the steering wheel. “Let’s go for a ride.”

“I really need to talk to you about something.”

“A virtual ride. Just a mind trip.”

When she pulled the door shut, Tim went around the coupe and got in through the passenger’s door.

Because of the chopped roof, headroom was inadequate for a tall man. Tim slid down in his seat, holding the parrot mug in both hands.

In that cramped interior, he still loomed over the woman as though she were an elf and he a troll.

Instead of mohair upholstery, common to the 1930s, he sat on black leather. Gauges gleamed in a checked-steel dashboard billet.

Beyond the windshield lay the kitchen. Surreal.

The keys were in the ignition, but Linda didn’t switch on the engine for this virtual ride. Maybe when her mug was empty, she would fire up the Ford and drive over to the coffee brewer near the oven.

She smiled at him. “Isn’t this nice?”

“It’s like being at a drive-in theater, watching a movie about a kitchen.”

“The drive-in theaters have been gone for years. Don’t you think that’s like tearing down the Colosseum in Rome to build a mall?”

“Maybe not entirely like.”

“Yeah, you’re right. There never was a drive-in theater where they fed Christians to lions. So what did you want to see me about?”

The coffee was excellent. He sipped it, blew on it, and sipped some more, wondering how best to explain his mission.

Crunching through dry eucalyptus leaves on the front walk, he had known how he would tell her. When he met her, however, she was different from anyone he expected. His planned approach seemed wrong.

He knew little about Linda Paquette, but he sensed that she did not need to have her hand held while receiving bad news, that in fact too much concern might strike her as condescension.

Opting for directness, he said, “Somebody wants you dead.”

She smiled again. “What’s the gag?”

“He’s paying twenty thousand to get it done.”

She remained puzzled. “Dead in what sense?”

“Dead in the sense of shot in the head, dead forever.”