Kelly’s friend. She took the kid and left. That lowlife of a boyfriend picked them up. End of story.”
I will tell you that I still did not understand what happened.
I will tell you that I went back to the hotel and calmly contemplated the situation. That when another masseuse walked out of her room—Trudy, one of the girls Kelly used to talk to—I said tell me about Kelly. She’s an empath, I said.
“A what?”
“An empath. She touches people and knows things about them.”
“Yeah. That they’re horny and out of shape.”
“She knows what they’re feeling—what kind of people they are.”
“Ha. Who told you that? Kelly?”
I still didn’t understand.
Even with Trudy staring at me as if I’d arrived from a distant galaxy. Even then, I refused to grasp what was right there.
“Kelly has a son,” I said.
“Uh-huh. Nice kid, too. No thanks to her. Okay, that’s not fair. She just needs to develop better taste in men.”
“You mean the father?”
“No. I mean the boyfriend. She’s got a dope problem—she’s always doing it, and she’s always doing them. Dopes.”
“What about the father?”
“Nah, he’s kind of nice actually. A real job and everything. She dumped him naturally. He’s fighting her for custody.”
“Why?”
“Maybe he doesn’t think junkies are the best company for an eight-year-old. And she’s always trying to poison the kid against him. It’s a fucking shame. You should’ve heard them going at it in the Tranquillity Room last week.”
“Last week…when? What day?”
“I don’t know. He comes by to drop off money for the kid. Tuesday, I think.”
Now it was coming. And it wouldn’t stop coming.
“What time Tuesday?”
“I don’t know. After lunch. Why?”
Look at it. It wants you to look at it.
Tuesday, I think. After lunch.
“What does he look like, Trudy?”
“Geez…I don’t know. About your height, I guess. Glasses. He didn’t look too fucking terrific after seeing her. She told him she was going to take the kid and disappear if he didn’t drop the whole custody thing. You know what I think? Her boyfriend wants that child support.”
About your height. Glasses.
Don’t look. Do not look.
Tuesday. After lunch.
When he argued with her in the meditation room, and then walked out looking anxious and upset.
Tuesday.
When he drove to his son’s school.
Tuesday.
When he tried to tell him that he was fighting for him and to please not believe the things his mother said about him. When he reached out to make the boy listen, but his son pulled away because all that poison had done its work.
“The boy,” I said. “He has brown hair. Cut real short—like a crew. He’s sweet looking.”
“Yeah. That’s him.”
I’m an empath, she said. I’m touching this bad man, this sexual predator, and what can I do about it—nothing, because the police won’t believe an empath like me. He’s coming Tuesday at two, but what can I do? Nothing.
How?
How did she pick me?
How?
Because.
Because she’d made me open that secret pocket.
Because one day they’d pointed me out to her—one of the masseuses—oh him, stay away, an ex-cop who used to beat people half to death.
But she didn’t stay away—she came down to the basement room where I punched holes in the wall. She talked to me. And then I ripped that pocket wide open for her and spilled my dreadful secrets all across the bed.
My brother. My guilt. My anger.
My trinity.
A kind of religion with one acolyte, and one commandment.
Vengeance is yours.
He’s a bad man, she said. He’s coming Tuesday at two. Tuesday. At two.
This man who loved his son. Who was simply trying to protect him.
From her.
Why, he said, standing at the top of that sandpit. Why?
Because anger is as blind as love, and she gave me both.
I will tell you that a drought took hold of L.A. and turned the brush in the Malibu hills to kindling. That twenty-million-dollar homes went up in smoke. That the drought dried up half the Salton Sea and sucked the water right out of that dump, and that a man disposing of his GE washing machine saw the body wrapped around an old engine casing.
I will tell you that he was ID’d and the bullet in his heart identified as a Walther .45—the kind security guards are partial to, and that a mother came forward and said she’d seen him being coerced into a car near her son’s school by another man.
I will tell you that the wheels of justice were grinding and turning and rolling inexorably toward me.
I will tell you that I am not liked much by the police officers I once worked with, but there is a code that is sometimes thick as blood. That makes an ex-partner whom you almost took down with you get hold of bank records so you might know where a Kelly Marcel has been using her VISA card.
I will tell you that there’s a motel somewhat south of La Jolla where the down-and-out pay by the week.
I will tell you that I drove there.
That I saw her drop the boy at his grandmother’s, who lived in a trailer park by the sea.
That the boyfriend took off for parts unknown.
That it’s down to her.
I will tell you that
