The Boys from Santa Cruz elp-5 Read online

  Gallows humor helped a little. Thanks to Izzo, Pender’s “And me without my spoon” remark the previous afternoon would eventually become part of Bureau folklore. What helped even more was the battered old pewter flask full of Jim Beam he always carried on road trips. He splashed a few inches of whiskey into a motel water glass from which he had removed the fluted paper colonial milkmaid’s hat placed there for his sanitary protection, and tossed it back-no sipping tonight.

  Then he took a long, hot shower, flouting the water conservation signs mounted all over the bathroom, with an explanatory card in the bedroom in case you’d forgotten since you left the bathroom. After patting himself dry, using every towel in the room, Pender donned a pair of beige slacks, a chocolate brown Hawaiian shirt with parrot green palm trees, and just to brighten things up a little, a pair of red socks under his brown Hush Puppies.

  Behind the FBI’s official ban on alcohol was a more reasonable de facto position: don’t embarrass the Bureau. Get busted for drunk driving even once and you’d find yourself doing federal employment background checks in Bumfuck, Keokuk, or Cucamonga until you were old and gray-or in Pender’s case, just old. So Pender’s next move, after slipping off his wedding ring, was to call a taxi.

  Following a free and frank discussion of local entertainment venues with the cabdriver, Pender wound up in a roadhouse called the Nugget, where a live band was playing Amazing Rhythm Aces covers to a surprisingly large and lively crowd, for a Wednesday night in the boondocks. He found a vacant stool at the bar, ordered a Jim Beam on the rocks, and sang along with the closing song of the set, “Third Rate Romance,” in a pure, sweet tenor voice that sounded like it belonged to someone else, someone who looked more like Vic Damone than Killer Kowalski.

  “I see you know all the words,” said the woman on the next stool, in a husky voice steeped in cigarettes and Southern Comfort. Freckled redhead, roughly his age. Snug jeans and a faded denim jacket. Nice figure, as best he could tell without being too obvious about it. And he liked her eyes, he decided, especially the way they crinkled up when she laughed.

  “It’s a hobby.”

  “Third-rate romances?”

  Pender laughed. “Song lyrics. Go ahead, try me-oldies are my specialty.”

  “Okay. How about ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?’”

  “Jimmy Ruffin, 1966.” He closed his eyes and ran through the first verse and the chorus, stretching out the concluding baaaabeeee while throwing in just a shimmer of tremolo. When he opened his eyes, he saw that she’d closed hers, and was swaying lightly on her stool. Golden Tonsils strikes again, thought Pender-the greatest tribute to his singing, he knew, was that, on a good night, it had been known to cause women to forget his looks. Of course, it also helped if they’d had a few drinks.

  He could dance a little, too, for a white guy. But slow dancing was his specialty. Let’s be honest, a gal’s cheek is resting against your chest, she’s not looking at your face. So while the band was on break, he fed a quarter into the jukebox and punched in “Sexual Healing,” then led her out onto the dance floor.

  By the time they returned to the bar, Pender had had ample opportunity to check out her figure, and concluded that while the rest of her might have been forty, the ass in those jeans couldn’t have been a day over twenty-five. He’d also learned her name: it was Amy. As in the song by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Not that he’d had to ask: everybody in the place seemed to know her: the bartender, the band, the waitress, half the dancers. “Hey, Ameeey!” “How’s it going, Amy?” “Freshen that up for you, Amy?”

  That and another mystery-why the bartender wouldn’t let him pay for their drinks-were cleared up during the inevitable what-do-you-do-for-a-living? conversation. “I work for the government,” said Pender. “And you?”

  She looked surprised. “I thought you knew.”

  Oh, fuck, he thought, she’s a pro. Not that that would have changed his mind about leaving with her-but it would have taken a lot of the fun out of it. “What?”

  “This is my place, the Nugget-I own it. Me and the bank, that is.”

  “I guess that seals the deal.” Pender took her hand in both of his. “Congratulations, Amy: you are now officially the woman of my dreams.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1

  Not only weren’t there any cookies or milk at lights-out in the segregation unit Wednesday night, it turned out there wasn’t even any lights-out. They dimmed them a little, I dozed a little, and the only way I knew the long night was over was that somebody brought me breakfast. Powdered scrambled eggs, burned toast, gristly mystery-meat sausage patty, box of juice, and finally, too late to matter, that long-promised carton of milk. No coffee: this was kiddie jail, after all. Don’t want to corrupt the youth of Marshall County with caffeine.

  At least I didn’t have to wear a jumpsuit. In Marshall Juvie, they give you jeans with an elastic waistband so you can’t hang yourself with your belt, a T-shirt, and a denim shirt stenciled D.O.C. Department Of Corrections. Rubber flip-flops so you can’t hang yourself with your shoelaces.

  After breakfast, my new lawyer came to see me. The kid yesterday, I learned, was like a junior junior associate of Wengert amp; Brobauer, the distinguished law firm where my grandfather was a major client. The new guy, though, wasn’t even a member of the firm, but a hotshot defense attorney from Sacramento whom Wengert amp; Brobauer had recommended. Arnold Hobby, Esq. Short guy. Million-dollar suit, slicked-back hair, rimless glasses. He told me I was being accused of helping Big Luke and Teddy videotape themselves raping and killing some girl. What they call a snuff video.

  Wow. You could have knocked me over with a toy balloon. I could hardly believe my ears, at least when it came to my dad being involved in something like that. Teddy, yeah: Who knows what weird shit went on inside that twisted brain? And of course there was that trunkful of cassettes she had been in such a hurry to torch. But Big Luke? Sure, he was an ex-con, but he’d done his time for peddling dope. And sure, he’d smack me around from time to time when he was tweaking, but he usually pulled his punches.

  As for me being involved, that was ridiculous. Can you imagine a father getting his only son involved in something like that? So I started to tell Hobby the cops had probably made some kind of mistake about my dad, and that they were definitely wrong about me, but he raised his soft pink hand and stopped me. All he wanted to know, he said, looking hard into my eyes, was had I ever owned a red 49ers jersey with the number 16 on it?

  “Sure,” I told him, looking him right back in the eye. “But I haven’t seen it in a long time. I think maybe my dad might have loaned it to somebody.”

  We were eyeball to eyeball for a couple seconds, then Hobby smiled. “Good lad,” he said. “Now come watch me pull a rabbit out of my ass.”

  The hearing, I found out later, was meant to be just a formality, in which the State would lay out enough of its case to convince the judge there was sufficient evidence to charge me. There wasn’t really supposed to be any cross-examination. But when the Marshall County detective testified that on the videotape they’d found on the premises, which showed Big Luke and Teddy raping and strangling a teenage girl, “the accused was clearly visible, reflected in the window behind the bed, holding the camera,” Arnold Hobby jumped up from the table.

  “Your honor, that’s a gross, bordering on prejudicial, mischaracterization of the evidence.”

  The detective looked like he wanted to spit. “How would you know? You haven’t even seen it.”

  “Have you?” Hobby asked quietly. The detective went beet red to the tips of his ears and clamped his lips together like somebody was trying to feed him a spoonful of buzzard puke. Hobby gave him a few seconds, then prompted him again: “Well, have you?”

  He shook his head reluctantly. “Not personally. But I have it on good authority from Special Agent William C. Izzo, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, that the accused comes into clear view during the course of the tape.”
/>   Now Judge Higuera, a Mexican-looking woman with black hair and bright red lipstick, looked over at the prosecutor, an assistant DA. “Can you produce this Agent Izzo?”

  The assistant DA conferred with his assistant. “Not at this time, your honor. He’s been called back to New York. But-”

  “Have you watched the tape yourself?”

  “I’m afraid not, your honor. I understand it was sent to the crime lab in Sacramento last night for analysis. I was only assigned the case a few hours ago.”

  “Can you produce anyone who has watched it?”

  “Not at this time, your honor.”

  The prosecutor looked sick. The judge looked disgusted. “Ball’s in your court, Mr. Hobby. Have you seen the tape in question, or can you produce anyone who has?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then on what grounds are you challenging the characterization of the evidence?”

  “Just this.” Hobby reached into his briefcase, brought out a manila folder, opened it, and removed a single sheet of paper. “May I approach?”

  The judge nodded. Hobby crossed the courtroom, followed quickly by the prosecutor, and handed the piece of paper up to the judge. Higuera read it, nodded again, then gave it to the prosecutor. He read it carefully and gave it back to her, then she gave it back to Hobby, who gave it to the detective.

  “Would you please identify the document I’ve just handed you?” asked Hobby.

  “It’s a photostat of a standard form we have to fill out when we send a piece of evidence to the CDOJ crime lab.”

  “And this one is from your department, signed by yourself, referencing the videotape about which you’ve just testified?”

  “Like I said, it’s a photostat, but yes, it is-and I’d like to know how you got your hands on it.”

  “It was in with the copies of the search warrants I requested. I assumed you meant me to have it-you weren’t trying to hide it from the defense, were you?”

  “No, but-”

  “Read the highlighted paragraph for us, would you please, Detective?”

  The detective looked up at the judge, as if to say, Do I have to? and she gave him a sharp, kind of sarcastic little nod.

  “It says: ‘At apx minute fourteen, a figure wearing a red San Francisco 49ers jersey bearing the number 16 and holding a camcorder is reflected briefly in the window above the bed. Can you freeze-frame slash clean up slash blow up the image to clarify it for purposes of identification?’”

  “To me, that doesn’t sound like whoever was holding that camcorder was clearly visible,” said Hobby. “Does it sound like that to you?”

  Another pleading look/slap-down exchange between the cop and the judge. “No.”

  “So would you agree that your earlier testimony was in fact a grossly prejudicial mischaracterization of the evidence on this videotape?”

  The detective didn’t even bother answering.

  “Chambers, gentlemen,” said the judge. She and the lawyers were gone for ten minutes or so, and when they came back, Judge Higuera announced from the bench that not only would she not allow me to be tried as an adult, she wouldn’t even indict me as a juvenile unless the DA came up with some admissible evidence, with a strong emphasis on the word admissible. I gave Hobby a low five under the table, so happy I wasn’t going to be tried for murder that I clean forgot all about the drug charges down in Santa Cruz, at least until they slapped the cuffs on me again.

  But Hobby told me not to worry about any of that, because of something called the fruit of the poisoned tree. If the arrest warrant had been obtained fraudulently, as the judge had just ruled, then the subsequent arrest would also be considered tainted, he told me. And so would any evidence obtained as a result of the search of my person and property during the course of the arrest.

  While we were out in the corridor talking, the prosecutor came bustling up, grabbed Hobby by the lapels, and started swearing a blue streak. He told Hobby that he knew effing well that the effing evidence request form hadn’t “inadvertently” been provided to him along with the effing search warrants, but had to have been given to him by one of his effing contacts in either the effing sheriff’s department or the effing DOJ crime lab.

  “Such language,” said Hobby, gently prying the guy’s fingers from the expensive-looking fabric. “And from an officer of the court.” Then he turned to me and winked. “Don’t worry about a thing, kid,” he said, as the deputies led me away. “After we walk you on all charges, we’ll sue the bastards for wrongful arrest.”

  Like an idiot, I believed him.

  2

  Lordy, I have died and woke up in heaven, thought Pender. Big old canopied feather bed, white curtains stirring lazily in the open window, sky the color of faded jeans, little birdies singing like they were having a contest-and he wasn’t even hungover. Song lyrics jockeyed for position in his head, and “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” triumphed-it may not have been original, but it was awfully goddamn apt.

  All the while, though, there was something small and nasty scratching at the back door of Pender’s consciousness. He tried to ignore it, but it slipped through while he and Amy were making sweet morning love, and he went embarrassingly limp.

  “What is it?” Amy asked him, surfacing from under the covers.

  “I just remembered where I’m supposed to be this morning.”

  “I knew it-I knew you were married.”

  “No, that’s not it,” he said miserably. “I mean, I am married, but that’s not it.”

  Warily: “What, then?”

  “I couldn’t…I mean, you wouldn’t want to- Aw, fuck it!” And suddenly, without any particular sense of having made up his mind, or even having thought it over, he knew what he was going to do. Or rather, not do.

  3

  The cop who drove me back down to Santa Cruz on Thursday afternoon made the one who’d driven me up to Marshall City seem like Mr. Rogers, but at least I got to sleep in my own bed that night. Seems that Fred and Evelyn had arranged for bail on the drug charges. But just in case you’re thinking the old folks aren’t so mean after all, here’s the kicker. They’d nailed down the bedroom window and hired an off-duty cop to sit outside my door all night. Probably afraid I was going to slit their throats while they were sleeping.

  I wouldn’t have, though. I wouldn’t even have run away. I had faith in Hobby and believed him when he said he was going to get me walked. But when I appeared in court Friday morning, instead of Hobby, a red-faced old man with a bow tie, double-breasted suit, and white hair swept up into a pompadour was sitting next to the kid attorney from the first night. It was Ellis Brobauer, managing partner of Wengert amp; Brobauer. Even the judge seemed impressed. The kid attorney looked absolutely terrified.

  Brobauer never actually spoke to me. They went right into chambers, came out five minutes later, and he whispered something to my grandfather, who was sitting in the first row of the courtroom.

  And yeah, in case you haven’t guessed yet, they’d sold me out again. I was going into a private treatment program in Humboldt County, the judge informed me, and if I behaved myself, eventually the drug charges would be expunged.

  So much for the fruit of the poisoned tree. So much for justice. “Thank you, your honor,” Brobauer said smugly, earning him a coveted spot on my fantasy revenge list, along with Fred, Evelyn, and of course Agent Pender.

  Things moved pretty quickly after that. I wasn’t allowed to attend my father’s funeral. I don’t even know if he had one. Instead I was bundled into the back of a white van with THE MOUNTAIN PROJECT stenciled on the doors. The driver, a thirtyish, sandy-haired psychologist called Dr. O, wore a corduroy jacket and a skinny tie. Kara, a relentlessly cheerful Viking with a long blond braid, rode shotgun. I wasn’t allowed to talk, but there were sandwiches and bottles of juice, and at least this time I wasn’t handcuffed. I couldn’t help noticing, however, that there weren’t any inside handles on the back doors of the van. I was still a prisoner, even though
I’d never been convicted of any crimes.

  On the drive north we stopped in San Francisco to pick up another prisoner at Juvenile Hall, high on a hill overlooking the city. The creepy Dr. O (his full name, I later learned, was Owen Oliver) stayed with me while Kara went inside with a paper bag full of clothes. Twenty minutes later an odd procession trooped out to the car. Behind Kara, there was a skinny little blond girl my own age, sandwiched between two uniformed deputies, each of whom had her by an elbow. Her feet were barely touching the ground.

  I slid over, Kara opened the door, the deputies shoved her in. “Luke, this is Dusty. Dusty, that’s Luke. You can say hello now, but after that, no talking for the rest of the ride.”

  I said hi, she mumbled something back, but in our mutual humiliation we could scarcely look at each other. An hour or so into the ride, however, I glanced over and saw tears running down Dusty’s cheeks. As a show of solidarity I gave Dr. O and Kara both the finger, down low where Dusty could see it but they couldn’t. She looked over at me, our eyes met for the first time, and then she flipped them the bird, too, but with an added feature I’d never seen before. She turned her left hand palm up on the seat between us, stuck her middle finger out, made an upward, jabbing motion, like she was sticking it right up their ass, and wiggled it obscenely. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud.

  We arrived at the Mountain Project headquarters in the dark. It was one of those fishing-hunting lodge deals, a two-story cabin built of logs, with a big open central room, a high balcony on three sides, and the bedrooms on the second floor ringing the balcony. And you know those old World War II movies where the Nazi commandant tells the new prisoners that escape isss impossible? Well, I took one look at this place and told myself that escape isss very possible. But not just yet. Still queasy from the long car ride, I was so exhausted all I wanted was a nice soft bed to lie down on. I’d also have killed for a joint, but that obviously wasn’t happening.