The Last Good Guy Page 7

  Another catch of breath. Impatience or exasperation. She used both hands to put her sunglasses back on, wedding band and engagement ring glinting in the sun.

  “Richard, of course. We divorced two years ago, before the move to Oceanside. Richard is a clinical psychologist. That’s him in the picture, though. We rented the flight suit from a costume shop. For fun. The picture was taken at the Flying Leatherneck Museum, not an actual runway. We all liked it so much. The three of us happy and together. I don’t have many pictures like that.”

  “So you leave it out for visitors.”

  “To document a failed marriage with a good memory. Get it?”

  “Why wear the rings?”

  “They simplify.”

  My face hurt. I felt mentally off-balance. The warmer my body got, the worse everything felt. I wanted to be frozen again. I wondered if the concussion that should have come earlier was finally arriving. Decided that this pretty woman sitting in front of me was one of the least trustworthy people I’d ever met. Like a talking doll. You just pulled the string and she blabbed whatever was set to come out next. I entertained the idea of a refund, a washing of hands, a day or two in bed, and an easier, more satisfying case.

  “Where is Richard now?” I asked, not sure I cared.

  “He took a position in Eugene. With a healthcare chain.”

  “Which one?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “The city where your parents died.”

  “I met him there, actually. In Eugene. After Mom and Dad.”

  “The number you gave me for him was bad.”

  “He’s obviously changed it. I haven’t called that number in almost two years.”

  “None of the search services I subscribe to have a record of your marriage to Richard Hauser, or to anyone else. They tend not to miss little things like that.”

  “We eloped in Reno.”

  “You’re beginning to exhaust me, Mrs. Rideout.”

  “I do that to people.” She stood. Came around the long picnic table and sat down beside me. Set her sunglasses on the table again. The drift of time and scent. Leaned in and set both her hands over one of mine. Warm where the ice had been.

  “Mr. Ford, please don’t give up on me and Daley. There’s darkness all around us. We need you. I know she’s fallen in with very bad people. I also know some of what you’ve done in your life, and gone through, and been made into. And I admire you very much. I may strike you as Little Miss Conduct, but I’m a good person. See?”

  I saw her eyes from point blank then, the blue of the iris and the indigo spokes around the pupil. Kaleidoscopes of sunlight. A gathering, judgmental beauty in them. I didn’t look away. Hadn’t not looked away since I met Justine. Let this unsettling fact join the river of unsettling facts running through me at that moment.

  We sat there, hand on hand for a while. A man beside a woman, a woman beside a man.

  “I’ll walk myself to the car,” she said.

  “I can manage that much.”

  Slow going, across the patio and up the railroad ties to the circular driveway, where Penelope’s cheerful yellow Beetle sat in the shade of a central coast live oak. I saw Burt and Frank not-so-covertly watching us from the far shore of the pond, where they were fishing for bass in the cattails. I saw Justine gliding past them in the rowboat, wearing a swimsuit and the floppy white hat she always wore. Dick glanced at me from the porch of casita one, where he sat in his Adirondack chair, overcasually clipping his fingernails. And Liz, way down in front of casita six, happening to look my way as she laced her shoes, tennis bag beside her, racquets protruding. Violet studied me frankly from the front porch of casita four, talking on the phone.

  “Apparently you get plenty of supervision around here,” said Penelope.

  “Only when I need it.”

  “Must be nice.”

  11

  ////////////////////////

  VIOLET, FRANK, AND I sat in the Cathedral by the Sea that Sunday morning, a full house, color-stained sunlight slanting through the windows and a rock band getting ready to start things off.

  It had been three days since my close loss to SNR Security. The colors of my face were a little less vivid, the swelling was down, and my stitches itched. The rib hurt only if I breathed. Daley Rideout had remained fully vanished since the call to her sister. Neither Darrel Walker, Oceanside PD, nor any of the several state and federal agencies I called would tell me anything other than that she was still missing and there had been no new developments in the case. Private investigators rank only slightly above registered sex offenders when it comes to need-to-know. Darrel, to his credit, seemed concerned about my split-decision loss to SNR Security, said he’d see what he could find out about the company.

  When the rock band kicked in, Violet paused her story about hitting tennis balls with Serena at a fund-raiser one summer, folded her hands over one knee, and listened up. Frank, who rarely spoke English away from home, was silent. Fingering the straw Borsalino I’d worn to protect the public from my face, I watched Pastor Reggie Atlas stride through the camera flashes to the pulpit.

  He was taller than I’d guessed from his pictures on the Internet, and he had an athlete’s spring to his step. Tan and trim. He looked to be late thirties or early forties, but I remembered he was forty-nine now. God was taking good care of his pastor. God and our healthy Southern California lifestyle. Reggie wore crisp new jeans, a long-sleeved open-collared white shirt, and white athletic shoes. His messy blond hair gave him a boyish look.

  I looked around at the packed room. Every pew full and enough people standing to drive a fire captain crazy. The mezzanine was filled to its railing.

  Today’s sermon was “Your Road to Damascus.”

  Atlas started off with an emotional call for God to bless our fighting men and women overseas, and for the congregation to help lift their spirits through the Onward Soldiers Fund, which was sending thousands of dollars’ worth of material every month to U.S. military deployed throughout the world. Exactly $55,375 so far, said Atlas, which averaged out to over four thousand dollars raised right here by this congregation every month since the Cathedral by the Sea had opened last year. The funds were matched by the Western Evangelical Alliance, doubling their value. The church had sent hundreds of phones, tablets, and sunglasses, mountains of healthy snack foods, crates of sunscreen, Quick Cooler bandanas, and compact “military-grade” Holy Bibles to servicemen and -women in more than a dozen countries. He said that God in his wisdom had made American fighting men and women the best in the world. And that America, as God’s chosen country, was obligated to defend this beautiful world from the godless, the evil, and the forces of Satan. In the end, God’s will be done. As an ex-Marine, I felt proud to be called the best. Along with hundreds of millions of other young people throughout history who had heard a similar message and bought it.

  Following his Onward Soldiers Fund pitch, Pastor Reggie took his sermon from the fields of battle to the personal battles faced by Christians. He said that the battle with outer enemies—such as those Satan-inspired terrorists in the Middle East—and our inner enemies—such as greed, selfishness, lust for money, and lust for the flesh—are all part of the same battle. He said that, like Paul, we each will face a reckoning on our various roads to Damascus.

  Atlas had a rich tenor and his words came to life without effort. His pacing was subtle but dramatic, and he had a nice gift for highs and lows, starts and stops. Occasionally he allowed a Georgia accent that suggested credence and civility. And something of the backwoods, too, self-humored but canny. He used his hands less than most evangelicals I’d seen, keeping them close in to his body and moving them like a boxer. I’ve heard evangelicals called “charismatic,” and this was a good description of Reggie Atlas. His delivery was powerful, articulate, and somehow humane. He seemed to feel the inner battles of which
he spoke. He was admonishing his lambs but empathizing with them, too.

  So when Pastor Atlas condemned the sins of “adultery and homosexuality,” he expressed what appeared to be genuine sympathy for adulterers and homosexuals. And when he talked about the need for “strong borders and a great wall of faith” between America and her “fine but less obedient neighbors,” he sounded truly sorry that some people could not be allowed to stay in “God’s chosen land.” When he said that abortion was an abomination to the Lord and should be punishable as a crime against all women and men, and that he would “cast the first stone with eyes gushing tears,” I believed him, though I wasn’t sure whom he wanted to tearfully stone, the abortionist or the pregnant woman, or both.

  Violet whispered into my ear: “I don’t agree with him on some things, but he makes me want to believe!”

  I glanced over at Frank, staring at Atlas with mute, beak-nosed stoicism.

  I looked back up to the pastor. Violet whispered something to Frank. I wondered why she was always talking, running, or looking behind her. Never at rest. Was she afraid something bad would happen if she was still? If so, what?

  Mom and Dad made us kids go to church until we were twelve, respectively. After that, up to us. We were baptized. I always liked the sermons. I daydreamed through them, sometimes, of surfing and girls and baseball. But I wasn’t bored by the sermons. I was inspired.

  The final part of Atlas’s sermon claimed that public and private wars could be won with the same two things: faith and action. Faith required prayer, and action required courage.

  He told a story of his early years preaching in rural Georgia, how after a day of carrying the word to the poor, he’d park his VW van down by a creek or in a campground or far out in a parking lot, and he’d set his cooler on a table if there was one, or on the ground, and he’d take the loaf of bread, then part the layer of ice cubes he’d buy every third night—only cost a quarter back then—and dig out the baloney and cheese and the condiments. Baloney and mustard made the miracle, he said. And it took lots of miracles, because he might take up two, even three collections on a good day, but he’d still barely have enough gas money to get to the next town and do it all again.

  One night in a park he was mugged by three young black men, no more than boys, really, but plenty big and rough. This was back in the days when the townspeople still wore their hair big, with the combs in them. Reggie was eighteen, less than six months on the road as an evangelical. It had rained earlier and there were ticks falling off the trees. After the muggers had beaten him down and rifled through his van and taken what they wanted and thrown the last of his food on the ground, Reggie had lain there in the cold dirt with the ticks landing all around him, and steadfastly refused to pray. Refused to ask for help. Refused to thank the Lord for sparing his life. For sparing his eyes and his hands and his vehicle or anything else, because Reggie was angry at the Lord for betraying His servant into the hands of the wicked. The longer he lay there, the angrier he got.

  By the time Reggie had washed himself off in a park bathroom and gotten the ticks off him, collected what food wasn’t ruined, then put his meager possessions back in order and climbed into the driver’s seat, he had one hundred percent retired as a preacher. He was done. It was over. He had failed his Lord and his mama and the old man and himself.

  But the engine of his van wouldn’t turn over, and the more he cranked the starter the weaker the battery got, until there was barely enough charge left to power the radio. He listened to it—to a country preacher he had always admired and who had gotten his own show—until his battery was completely dead. “Like my spirit,” said Reggie.

  It was late by then, and he scrunched down in the uncomfortable van seat and let his head roll against the window. It was early spring and the glass was cold. He had almost fallen asleep when he saw an old man walking across the park toward him. It looked as if he had emerged from behind a young magnolia, but Reggie wondered how the man could have hidden himself behind the slender, still leafing tree.

  The man carried a black duffel and it looked heavy. He set it on the picnic table and came to the window. Reggie looked at his face through the dew-dripping glass. An older guy, long white hair brushed back. Blue eyes in a haunted face. Reggie tried to roll down the window, but they were electric and he had no power. He swung the door open and stepped out.

  “I heard you preach today,” said the man. “In the holler down to the orchard.”

  “Then you heard my last preaching,” said Reggie.

  “Looks like they got the better of you.”

  “Three on one. I’m tough, but I ain’t that tough.”

  “What did they take?”

  “If it was good they took it.”

  “Here.”

  The old man tugged lightly on the sleeve of Reggie’s coat and led him to the picnic table. There, he unzipped the big black duffel and began pulling things out. Reggie said the man didn’t rummage around inside, he just pulled certain things out and left others, as if he knew exactly what he needed and where it was. Reggie watched the collection pile up on the table: baloney—same brand as his—and bread and a few cans of pork and beans and a box of crackers, a can of condensed milk. Then a Falcons sweatshirt that didn’t even look that dirty, and a bottle of body-and-hair wash, and a bath towel, white and folded and once belonging to the Holiday Inn. The old man rested one foot on the picnic bench and from inside a sock he pulled some money, folded and dented in the shape of his ankle. He set two fives on top of the towel. Then put the soap on top so they wouldn’t blow away.

  “I’m not taking this,” Reggie had said.

  “Or you can take it and get that battery charged,” the old man said. “That was some really good preaching today. You got to me. Maybe I’ll see you down the road, Atlas. I hope you can keep carryin’ the word.”

  And off he walked. Reggie Atlas never saw him again.

  Murmurs and soft exhales from the congregation. I heard Violet sniffle softly. Saw Frank studying her with apparent concern.

  Violet leaned in and whispered: “I want something like that to happen to me.”

  12

  ////////////////////////

  AFTER the service a crowd waited in the courtyard to greet Atlas. He stood smiling, pressed by his faithful. His casual attire was perfect for his adopted San Diegans—mostly shorts and jeans and tank tops and T-shirts, except for the older crowd. Kids released from Sunday school ran amok. Awkwardly cool teenagers gathered together on one side of the courtyard. Better dressed than their parents. I pictured Daley Rideout among them, a curly-locked wiseass with a pretty face and a high IQ.

  From here you could see the Pacific glistening under a light bank of clouds. Justine, my wife, had died out in that ocean, not far from here. Flying her Cessna 182, which she had affectionately named Hall Pass. She’d bought it used on her public defender’s salary, painted it pink. A failed fuel pump. No fault of hers. No fault of the ocean. But from that day on, I’d never been able to view the Pacific as pacific. To me it was dangerous and unforgiving, a thing to be feared. I felt the same way about the God that had let Justine die there, terrified and alone. I’m still trying to get over that. Trying to be a bigger man.

  As part of being a bigger man, I bought a similar Cessna 182 not long after Justine died, and christened it Hall Pass 2. I fly it for pleasure and occasionally for business. When I’m up there in the cockpit, looking down at this earth, which oddly looks bigger the farther away from it you get, I feel Justine’s presence, and some of the happiness that flying gave her. Some of the joy and the risk, too. Heightened alert. A part of me is still angry that I wasn’t with her that day. That I let her go up there, alone. Another part is afraid that what happened to her will happen to me. Why shouldn’t it?

  There were tables of food and drink set up in the central park. Trays of turkey hot dogs and burgers, bowls of salad and
pink boxes of donuts, all free. We bellied up but donated generously. The half-gallon tip bottles were filling quickly with bills.

  I kept my hat down low, just in case Adam Revell of SNR Security had pulled a Sunday shift here. I wasn’t sure that Adam himself was among my new friends out at Paradise Date Farm, but he certainly might be.

  We sat in the shade with paper plates on our laps. Frank ate as much as a bear, though his manners were better. Violet talked about making tamales on a semester in Mexico her senior year at SIUE. Which led me to note that there were very few Latinos there today. Or blacks, Asians, or American natives. Which is not in keeping with most of San Diego County, as mixed and varied as most any in this republic, I’d recently read.

  I wondered if Pastor Atlas’s remarks about “our fine but less obedient neighbors” might be a general topic here. So I checked the Cathedral by the Sea reviews online.

  Almost all of the comments were positive, but some were not:

  My visit to the Cathedral by the Sea was very strange. I was made to feel as if I was not welcome because I am of Mexican descent. I will not go back.

  Pastor Reggie is a racist jerk!

  I saw almost no people of color, other than myself and my girlfriend. The people were friendly to one another, but they acted as if we were not there. Won’t go back there again.

  There were several vitriolic replies to these, mostly along the lines of If you don’t like it here, why don’t you go back to your own miserable country?

  After lunch we strolled along the rose garden, and under the Canary Island palms that stood, stately and pruned and calm, above us. Walked along a row of what looked like classrooms. The doors were open and I could see the walls inside, decorated with the student drawings and posters and prints that an elementary school would have. The congregation had thinned out by then, cars heading down the hill from the parking lot, church volunteers bagging the lunch debris.