“All you turkeys is just narrow-minded. You got no power o’ vision,” JoJo said. JoJo had this big idea he could find gold ore beneath the sand on the beach. I could not hold that against him. Every man must have his dream. But JoJo’s dream turned him into the devil’s own target.
I get ahead of myself. You have to understand how we were together, what a team the four of us made, how that makes what happened all the more a cause for grief.
Cindylee was of our company. Cindylee would listen to JoJo go on about the gold, then say, “You got the IQ of a watermelon, JoJo.”
He would just eat it up. There she’d be, standing with the wind whipping her skirt, pasting her hair to her cheek. She’d be eating an apple and spitting out wrinkled peel she didn’t like.
And Buddy, he’d be all casual laid out on his army blanket spread there on the sand, and he wouldn’t even look over, just tell JoJo he was a sun-fried fool.
JoJo would pluck a bottle cap off the bottom of his metal detector, toss it toward Cindylee, and wait for that cockeyed smile where her lips disappear but her eyes glow with sea-shine. Then off he’d go, waltzing with that widget he thought was his gold-finder but to us looked like a saucer on a broomstick.
Each of us, we had our talents. That’s what made us stand alone or stand together, did not matter at all. Cindylee could find clothes by just snapping her fingers. People leave clothes on benches, window ledges, over tree limbs, as if they know Cindylee will be coming along when she is in the right need for something to wear.
Buddy now, I swear: Dollar bills sail through the air and into his hand like paper airplanes. Pay phones spit out quarters when he passes by. Folks with holes in their pockets and hay in their heads stroll along the edge of the sand in front of him, dropping coins in his path. That’s Buddy.
Now me, I got a good eye for recyclables. Once I carried a chair which was right out there on Coast Highway where anybody could have grabbed it, carried it down to the thrift store and got a whole twenty bucks for it. I can spy a mess of bottles from a mile away. I scrounge for stuff left out for trash pickup that the city sure don’t need.
And JoJo? He could stash more stuff in his beat-up golf bag than marbles in a gunny sack. He could turn a profit on wire coat hangers, old cans, and car keys. What he’d do, he’d sell them to an artist in Laguna, and this artist would make tinkling mobiles out of them to sell to the tourists as if they had never seen a thing so clever. If only JoJo hadn’t gone and got greedy, we would all be back to those heavenly days.
It started when JoJo made off with a book on minerals last June. He used to lift books out of the library, see. Not a thief, no no. But if you don’t have an address, you can’t get a library card. So yes, JoJo would filch books, but the thing was, he always brought them back in when he was done. Then the library went and put in those electronic doodads that could spot a gnat’s knuckle. The result of which was to make JoJo stop bringing books back. So you could say the library itself contributed to the crime. He could get them out all right, because he’d just open a back window and drop them to the ground, but throwing them back up was not a viable option, as the businessmen say.
Anyway, that book on minerals he did not return, and this is what he learned: Salt domes form around oil deposits. “What’s in the ocean?” he says.
Fish and garbage, we say.
“In the water,” he says, like a chemist. “Salt,” he says. He figures if oil is attracted to salt, then there’s a chance gold and other precious ores would be too. Figure out where the salt domes are under the sand, then tell the mining companies. The mining companies could dig it out, JoJo would collect a finder’s fee, and we could all be in tall cotton.
I said, “I don’t see no salt domes, JoJo.”
“Dunes are domes, dummy,” and JoJo liked the sound of that, and we all laughed. Dunes are domes, dummy. “It’s here, boys,” he’d say. Boys, even though there was Cindylee. “It’s here,” he said, “I just hafta find it.”
“Always you just hafta find it, you numbskull,” Buddy said, who never had more than a dishwashing job in the last thirty years, but what he did own was opinions.
It would go on like that, our bunch hunkered down at the spot we called The Place by the foot of the cliff near the Hotel Laguna. Movie stars used to stay at that hotel. It’s got a tower, a red Spanish-tile roof, and a private stretch of white sand marked off by signs with hardly anybody on it. Every morning we’d meet up just the other side of that stretch, smoke a cigarette, and talk our talk, and then JoJo would haul out his detector from his golf bag and go out on his skinny legs till he was no bigger than a gull in our sight. We’d watch him swing that chunk of steel over the sand like a slow man sweeping a rug that’s already been swept. Then the rest of us would pool our pennies for half a six-pack to kick off the morning. We would split up then and meet back at The Place a couple hours later.
So this one day we were lounging around on some ratty towels the laundry boy from the hotel let us have, and here come JoJo walking his metal detector like a pup on a string. He had on a new pair of pants and redder-’n-hell suspenders, but the same old lop-eared boots.
“So JoJo,” Cindylee says while putting on her second sweater because it was a chill April. She’s about forty—younger than us, but not as good lookin’. “You among the wealthy yet?”
“Who says I can’t find gold on the beach?” He holds out his wrist and shows us a thing gleaming.
Buddy gets up for a look. “Holy crackers,” he says—Buddy’s religious. It’s a Rolex, or I’m a blind surgeon.” It was a watch all right, but I can’t tell a Rolex from a Rolaid, so I said the smart thing, which is no-thing.
JoJo commenced to tell how he come by it. “Down by those hangover houses is where I found it.” He looks at Cindylee. “One of us could wear it once in a while,” he says.
“You could put a poster up, offer a reward,” Buddy says. “Now why would I do that?”
“Get money on it without going to jail.”
“Where they gonna call, One-Eight-Hundred-Sand?”
Buddy’s face falls. “Oh, yeah.”
I ask, “You find the fancy clothes too?”
JoJo’s wavy hair had recent water on it. All along I’d figured he was sweet on Cindylee. He was sure looking sprite this morning, and his eyes were clear as the wink of a dime.
“Lady in a alley tossed ’em out a window,” he says. “Seen me passing by, said, ‘Now there’s a fella’d look good in these.’ Whoosh, plop!, I get a new wardrobe.”
“Right,” Cindylee says, “and I am from Par-ee.”
“Don’t argue what the Lord provides,” Buddy says, his face open to the wonder of it all.
“This female philanthropist toss out the Rolex too?” Cindylee said.
“I told you,” JoJo says with a hurt look, “I found it on the beach.”
And that was all he was going to say. He turned his face so that from the side he looked like a real mad cat.
We walked up the sidewalk to the bakery near the hotel and bought two chocolate-chip cookies.
Next day, no JoJo.
Day after that, no JoJo.
He wasn’t at the Methodist church where they give out soup and sometimes even a room so you can take a nap. He wasn’t on the bench at Forest Avenue. He wasn’t at The Place, anytime we saw. At dusk, after the neckers went home, when we might find him scanning the rolled-around-in sand for pocket booty, he was nowhere to be seen.
The day after that. Buddy stopped a cop who was already stopped, really. The officer was out of his squad car, sitting on a wall near steps that go down a full story to the beach. Buddy said he guessed the cop was looking for bad guys out on the flat green sea. For Buddy to stop a cop was a brave thing to do, because Buddy is shy as a bill in the breeze. He got up the gumption to ask the police officer about JoJo. The cop knew who JoJo was, even down to his last name, which, if I didn’t mention it, was Waverly, a fact I was not apprised of till the moment Buddy told me.
Well, among other rude things the cop said, this is how he answered Buddy: “Guess your pal took a midnight dip after one too many Thunderbirds.”
Buddy says, “Whaddya mean?”
And the cop says, “He bobbed up yesterday near Three Arch Bay.”
We couldn’t believe it, JoJo drowned.
Cindylee said no way would that man take a swim and forget to come up—he didn’t like the water. No way would he be in it of his own free will. She wanted us to go talk to this cop herself. I said I’d as soon watch, thank you, from across the street.
But I tagged along, me behind Buddy, behind Cindylee. While she walked, she lifted the edge of her pink skirt to her nose and eyes, sniffling at the news about poor JoJo. Beneath her skirt were long green pants and beneath those ankles thin as net poles. Meanwhile, I’m thinking about JoJo’s metal detector and that golf bag I could use because pardon me but my duffel’s ripped.
We found the cop same place Buddy did, one hand and one foot on the low rock wall and his elbow propped on his thigh so his fist could hold his chins up. He wasn’t facing the water this time, but looking down-beach, along the row of houses hanging over the sand, where JoJo found his watch.
The three of us coming toward the fella that way, I’m surprised he didn’t get shook up, but he barely glanced at us until Buddy spoke. “Officer,” Buddy said, “these are my friends here, Cynthia Lee and Harley Boone. Harley wants to ask you something.”
I gave Buddy a look to kill but found my voice. “Uh, did JoJo Waverly have, like, a instrument for metal detection upon his whereabouts?”
Cindylee’s eyes were asking what wave I washed in on.
The officer shook his head and looked us up and down, each one.
“Was there a golf bag, uh, recovered from the area of the happening? It would be white with green flaps and green stitching.”
“I don’t believe so,” he said, blue eyes reading me.
Cindylee was on him like a terrier on a mouse. She even moved up to his inner space, if you know what I mean, and the man leaned so far away I thought he might tumble off the wall.
“You found him where exactly?” she demanded, a quiver in her voice. “In the water, out of the water, on the rocks, where?”
The cop stood up then and pointed southward. “Spread-eagled on the sand,” he said, “crabs crawling on him.”
I thought I saw satisfaction on his face. I could have shoved him over the wall.
It flashed on me about how it must have been there for JoJo, cold and alone on the sand, and I had to change my thoughts to a picture of JoJo when the gulls came walking up to look in his face and he thought he was in Tahiti. Maybe he was in Tahiti, if Heaven or Tahiti takes men who think doors left open are meant for them.
Then I remembered the gold watch on his wrist and asked the officer, “How about his, you know, clothes?”
“The victim’s clothing is available for those who furnish him burial, but far as I know, there are no relatives of record,” the Mr. Blue said. “You know of any relatives?” He looked at me in a way made me want to see what was on down the road.
“No, sir.”
“Then I guess we’re done here.”
Buddy rolled his eyes at me.
We moved along. Back on the sidewalk, we passed by people eating. JoJo told us once that in Japan it’s impolite to eat and walk at the same time. I don’t know about that. I just wait for somebody to leave a half a sandwich on top of the trash, and I don’t care if he’s walking, chewing, and smacking the top of his head at the same time when he does.
We slowed down at the Whaling Wall, which is where these big blue whales used to be painted on the side of a building by the hotel parking lot. The whales were smiling, headed out to sea. At first they used to head inland till somebody told the artist better and he did it over. Now they’re gone the way all things go, painted over for good, voted down by a city council that is supposed to know a wiser way. That morning though, when the whales were still there, Buddy moved under the baby one, and we all leaned there soaking up a cloud-peep of sun, while the hotel parking lot attendant glared at us but kept his distance.
I said, “You notice that officer’s skunned-up knuckles?”
“No ma am. I didn’t.” Buddy calls me ma’am sometimes. He is getting stranger all the time. I think he needs Vitamin B.
“Did you notice that cop’s wrist, what he had on it?” This from Cindylee. Her eyes were bright as boat lights. She unknotted her sweater-arms from around her neck and fought her fists through them as the wind came up from the beach. “You should pay attention. You too, Harley.” She smelled like hotel soap pieces the Mexican boy sets out the backdoor. “JoJo’s gold,” she said. “Right there on his wrist.”
“Gosh,” Buddy said.
“Son-of-a…” is all I could say.
“JoJo told me he saw somebody leave out those hangover houses with stolen stuff in a trash bag, twice,” she said. “I go, ‘It’s not you, is it, JoJo, taking that stuff?’ He’s like, ‘I may be ugly, but I’m not dumb.’”
“You never told us that. About JoJo,” I said, “seeing somebody.”
“Just ’cause I practically sit in your lap all day don’t mean I have to tell you every blasted thing.”
“What else he say?”
“He knew where the thief stashed the stuff. I’m all: ‘You stay away from that, JoJo. Don’t be poking around now.’ And he goes...you know what he goes?” She was looking at Buddy, a big-eyed baby if babies had a fringe of hair below the ears and needed an afternoon shave. “He goes, It’s an officer of the law, but don’t you be tellin’ nobody. An officer of the law who had found himself a way to finance his retirement.’ Then he says, ‘How’d you like to accomp’ny me to the City of Lights in the great state of Nevada, all the way in a limousine with your feet up on the seats and me pourin’ champagne?’” Two tears rode down her cheeks like steam drips on a restaurant window. “JoJo’s gold, that Roll of Decks come outta that cop’s stash,” she said.
“No way!” Buddy cried out.
“Don’t be lookin’ to a brass shield for justice, Buddy, nor God neither,” she said.
My heart was throwin’ horseshoes. “I’d sure like to get my hands on that metal detector,” I said. “First off, maybe I’d use it to brain some certain body.”
Cindylee tore away up to the sidewalk when the parking lot attendant came strolling our way. We followed.
In a little bit, she said, “I knew that cop in vocational school. He was a noodle then, and he’s a noodle now. He made pipe bombs in his parents’ garage.”
Buddy and I tossed glances. It’s hard to know sometimes. We walked on, and after a block we went on our separate routes.
After that, I didn’t see Buddy or Cindylee for two whole days, and I figured they’d marched off for better pickin’s, but I was lonely and sorry they’d just take off without a goodbye. It was harder getting along without splitting the spoils, you might say.
I stopped in to a little Unity church for breakfast the third day. The woman there has extra bagels a lot of times. Then I went back to The Place. Lo and behold, Cindylee and Buddy were there. And Buddy had JoJo’s golf bag.
I said, “Where the heck you get that thing?”
“Asked for it,” he said. “I spotted it in the officer’s car the other day when he had the trunk open, and I just asked for it. Imagine. Buddy, the one who’d wet his pants before asking could he use the rest room. JoJo’s metal detector was in the bag, he said, but it was broken. The plate thing was gone off the bottom, and it sure couldn’t detect itself. Since then, Cindylee had been using the handle to turn over trash, so she wouldn’t have to bend so much. Her cheeks were rosy and she had on a new dark sweater.
Buddy offered me the golf bag, and I took it with genuine thanks. “But what are you going to use?” I asked.
“Holy crackers,” he said, “what am I going to do with that clumsy thing when I’m sittin’ in Tahiti?”
“It’s Tahiti now, huh? And just how you going to go about that?”
The world is full of bounty,” he said, “and we are obliged to partake of it.” He was wearing a pretty good bomber’s jacket he’d found by the restaurant where all the waiters wear bow ties. I shook my head and looked at them both real close, but if there were tales to tell, the two of them had a bad case of laryngitis.
Buddy started acting really different after that day: smiling at Cindylee all the time, spitting out more words than crackers have crumbs. Once I came upon him and Cindy eating chocolate-chip cookies all by themselves. I was hurt, but didn’t let on. Cindylee had on red pants and men’s socks with a diamond pattern that made her ankles look thicker. Maybe that gain was from all the cookies, I can’t say.
Then last week I’m looking at the front page of the local paper through a news rack, and at first I couldn’t be sure because of a split running down the middle of the plastic shield that was all yellowed from sun, but then I make out it’s a picture of our Mr. Officer Blue. I put real money in the newsstand slot and took out the paper. For good measure I took out a couple other copies, too, and left them on top for those less fortunate than I.
It seems Mr. Blue had reached the end of his days upon the rocky shoals. That is to say, Mr. So-Sure-of-Himself was not as surefooted as he might have liked to be. He fell off the very same wall upon which he formerly gazed at pirates on the sea. That sorry man suffered a plenitude of head wounds. In a tidelet below, he was found face down.
The paper said he was last seen conversing with a woman in dark clothes and a beret. That was two weeks ago.
Myself I’ve only tried on one beret, the one I recently took ownership of. I don’t know why people wear them. They seem like only half a hat to me. I keep meaning to give this one to Buddy for his cold noggin, but it’s hardly any good because it only covers one ear at a time. It works okay to put my small stuff in if I have a rubber band to twist it off with. But I definitely should offer it back to Buddy. It was in the golf bag, down the bottom, when he gave the bag to me, so I guess he came upon it first. Maybe it’s the one that woman who the paper said was talking to Mr. Blue before he took a Humpty-Dumpty fall off the wall, who knows? All I know is, it still has sand in it no matter how I beat it out, like someone used it for a bucket for booty, just like me.
Come to think of it, that beret just might look good on Cindylee. It’s been a while since I seen those eyes a-glitter. Maybe I’ll truck on down to The Place and see if Buddy and her are still stuck up or maybe, shoot, stuck together. Yesiree.