As the gates on Dove Way slid back, I saw the silver Lexus. I recognized it right away. Instead of driving down into the garage, I parked alongside. When I walked into the house, Rhonda Champion and Mallory were sitting in the living room.
Rhonda got up, gently put her arms around me and pressed her lips against mine. Her long, raven hair smelled of lilac as it brushed my face. I held her a little longer. When she stepped back, she let out a short whistle. “Whew, you need a bar of soap.”
“You’re the second person in two days to comment on my hygiene.”
“Why did it take two of us? Go directly upstairs and leave those clothes in the hall.”
I did as I was told, and a few minutes after I stepped into the shower, Rhonda came into the bathroom and leaned against the sink. She was holding a couple of tall Arnold Palmers, and I extended a hand through the steam so she could hand me one. I realized I hadn’t spoken to her since the shooting, and now the guilt set in.
Noting the nasty scar on my chest, she said, “When they were rummaging around in there, did they happen to find a heart?”
“I’m sorry. I should have called.”
“Damn right you should have. Fortunately, Mallory isn’t as civility-challenged.”
“So what are you doing this far from Orange County? Not that I’m not happy to see you.”
“I’ve come to take you away from all this.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I can’t leave right now.”
“That’s what Mallory said you’d say. So he called your doctor.”
“Ted Goldman? What’s he got to do with this?”
“He said you either go with me and rest, or you’re fired as a patient.”
“Doctors don’t fire patients, and especially not Ted.”
She took out her cell phone and dialed. When she handed me the phone, Ted was already on the other end. He didn’t wait for me to plead my case.
“Listen, you fucker, you gave me your word, and I bought it. You’ve got an appointment a week from tomorrow, and if Rhonda doesn’t call here every goddamned day and tell me you’re on that big-ass boat of yours resting and recuperating, don’t bother to show up. Don’t even call. I’ll mail a referral.”
“Ted…”
“Wake the fuck up, Rail. This isn’t a hollow threat. I don’t waste my time on assholes. You do what I say, or you’re out of my practice. Capice?”
When I started to answer, he’d already hung up.
Rhonda saw me looking at the dead phone. “How great is that? Somebody who doesn’t give a fat rat’s ass how much money you have.”
This didn’t happen to me very often. When you’re rich, you always get to be the magnanimous one—or the jerk. Everyone laughs at your bad jokes and tells you you’re incredibly smart when you’re really a fucking dunce. And they hang on every word of your bullshit stories that they’ve heard a hundred times before and that weren’t interesting from the get-go. For the first time in a long time, I was just like the rest of the world. A guy who had to yield to a higher power. And I didn’t like it. But Ted Goldman didn’t seem to give a shit what I liked.
To Rhonda I said, “Okay, what do you have in mind?”
She cut me some slack. “No heavy lifting, but you could end up sweating a lot. We never got to celebrate your birthday, remember?”
While I dressed, Rhonda sat on the bedroom patio and made phone calls. When I was ready, she came back in. Standing on her toes, she kissed me again.
“What was that one for?” I asked, smiling.
“I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
She took my hand. “I’m not going to ask now, but one of these days, I want to know who Kim York was.”
We walked hand in hand downstairs. Her skin felt terrific. I’d forgotten how much I liked her company.
In the foyer, Mallory was standing with the front door open, holding a small valise. He handed it to Rhonda and said, “The pharmacy. His bags are in the boot. I’ll come down in a couple of days with fresh things.”
“You don’t have to look so pleased with yourself,” I said to him.
Mallory gave me that grave look Brits must go to a special camp to learn. “No, I could have taken a fireplace poker to your self-destructive highness, but that would have cost me my paycheck. For the record, however, Dr. Goldman isn’t the only one who thinks you’re a schmuck.”
Rhonda and I laughed. Mallory didn’t.
Rhonda’s an interior designer who specializes in yachts. She also drives like she’s taken a wrong turn off Le Mans. I’m not sure we could have flown to Newport Beach any faster, which was good, because I hate holding my breath that long.
The Sanrevelle is a black, 102-foot Benetti with red trim on the superstructure and an interior of polished mahogany. The combination of the black and red hull against the rich wood makes it stand out even when surrounded by larger boats. Rare is the Friday I’m not headed south for a couple of days away from the endless cacophony and barely controlled chaos of L.A. I love the city, but it can be unrelenting, and a two-day change of pace refreshes me more than a week at a fancy resort. A lot of weekends, I don’t even leave the dock.
When Rhonda handed her Lexus over to the yacht club valet, brakes smoking, and I saw the Sanrevelle sitting there in the sun, clean, unbuttoned, flags flapping, I felt better than I had in a long time. And when Bert and Brittany Rixon appeared on the forward deck and Bert leaned over to drop me an ice-cold Corona, the moment was complete. The Vicodin would have to move over. Mexican brew coming through.
People ask why I keep a boat fifty miles away rather than at Marina del Rey. Those are the same people who think Orange County is just something they have to pass through to get to San Diego. It’s only the next province south, but if L.A. is hip-hop, OC is Sinatra. It’s not an age thing, it’s an attitude.
With her auxiliary tanks full, the Sanrevelle can cruise more than fifteen hundred miles on her twin Volvos. I usually hire crew when I’m going on an extended trip, but if Mallory’s aboard, he’s twice the sailor of anyone else I’ve ever met, and the two of us have taken her to Mexico several times.
She’s really too big to be operated by one person, but if I stay focused, I can manage. It doesn’t matter how discreet a crew is, private conversations simply aren’t as private, and I dislike having security determined by the weakest link in a chain of employees.
When I bought her, I’d been looking for a boat, but not one this big. She’d been built for an NBA All-Star—one of those guys you would know even if you don’t follow basketball. Tired of bumping his head on doorways, he’d had everything designed to his specifications. Vaulted ceilings, oversized furniture, a massive bed half again the size of a king, and forty-five-inch-high counters instead of the standard thirty-six.
Then his career took a turn for the worse, and he was forced to take a gig in the European league for a fraction of his NBA pay. Adding to his troubles were a couple of exwives. When the broker—an old friend, Gil Huppy—called me and said he had a two-year-old, 102-footer available, I almost hung up on him. I wanted to get back on the water—needed to get back—but I’d had in mind something half that size.
Then Gil explained that because of her interior scale, she was unappealing to most buyers, and the owner would take just about anything—as long as it was cash. So, like the house on Dove Way, everybody got something out of the deal. And I quickly discovered that this particular yacht fit both my size and my lifestyle. I’ve also made great friends at the club, and, in the reverse of my friends in L.A., the OC people can’t understand why anyone would live anywhere near Los Angeles, even Beverly Hills.
Rhonda had to go to her office for a while, and Bert and Brittany always take a nap in the afternoon—at least that’s what they call it—so we agreed to meet back on the Sanrevelle at seven for dinner.
After they’d gone, I hiked up the hill to Hoag Hospital, which sits on a cliff overlooking Newport Beach. It wasn’t built as a lighthouse, but you can see its rooftop beacon ten miles out, and every boater I know gets his bearings from it.
I went into the small chapel off the main lobby and sat down. It’s a place I like to go to think. Today there was only one other person there, an older gentleman who seemed to be carrying the weight of the world.
I was raised in the Church of England—although my mother used to sneak me out to Catholic mass when she didn’t think anyone was looking. But as I got older, I ended up like my father. He believed in God, he just didn’t want an intermediary.
A number of years ago, after a particularly unpleasant operation in Portugal, where the people who put it together ignored the intelligence and a couple of good men died who shouldn’t have, I found myself walking by a small church in Lisbon. On a whim, I went in. Mass was going on, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to collect my thoughts. Later, after the congregation had gone, the priest saw me sitting alone and asked if he could be of any help. With my English-accented Brazilian Portuguese, I managed to tell him I was fine.
His reply has stuck with me. “That’s why we’re here, senhor. For when you’re favoravelmente. And when you’re not so favoravelmente.”
Today, I was both.
The four of us brought in Chinese and spread it out on the circular rosewood table in the salon. Bert always orders for everyone because he insists on at least two dishes per person to assuage his prodigious appetite. When he had his business, he spent a lot of time in China and learned Mandarin, so he relishes conspiring with Marty Wong, the owner of Jade Pavilion, to sneak in something none of us recognizes.
This time it was pickled eel, which I didn’t tell him I’d been eating for years, and while we sampled, he regaled us with stories about sautéed chicken hearts in Shanghai and beef tendons up the Yangtze. We’d heard the stories before—many times—but we laughed in the right places anyway, like good friends do. Bert, Brittany and Rhonda tapped into my cabernet rack, but I had gone to iced tea and stayed there. I’d drunk the one Corona earlier, and even though I hadn’t taken any more Vicodin, I didn’t want to end up drooling in a corner.
Bert’s only forty-five, but he’s retired—sort of. He’s an engineer, and he got very rich inventing a prosthetic leg that’s so good, amputees can run marathons. When he sold his company, the buyers forked over $300 million with two caveats: don’t come to the office and stay out of the prosthesis business.
So Bert bought himself a 212-foot Italian Codecasa, the Once More With Feeling, where he and Brittany live, and a small warehouse nearby where he can tinker. I’ve never been invited to the warehouse, but Brittany—they’ve been married eighteen months after ten years of dating—says that Bert is working on something that will advance prostheses twenty-five years. I told her I hope he’s saved some of that $300 million for the lawsuit.
Rhonda had just finished redecorating the Rixons’ boat, and the owners were raving about how much they loved what she’d done. But when I saw Rhonda roll her eyes and pour herself a third glass of wine—a rarity—I suspected she was just glad the job was over. Like every engineer I’ve ever met, Bert doesn’t do anything that he’s not involved in up to his elbows. And that he doesn’t think he’s a genius at.
The Once More With Feeling, in keeping with Bert’s personality, is the most magnificent assemblage of steel and mahogany in the marina. Nine cabins, a crew of seven and a helicopter pad make it just slightly less comfortable than the Palace of Versailles. The previous owner, an Argentine cattle rancher, had decorated it like a Polish cathedral, but Rhonda took a fire axe to the brocade and broadloom and turned the interior into a showplace for Bert’s Charles Russell sculptures.
Bert’s favorite topic of conversation is politics, which, frankly, bores me. Since twenty-four-hour news, no matter what people tell pollsters, nobody is undecided about anything. So why break a sweat arguing that the other side is uninformed or boneheaded or criminal. Nobody’s changing.
But Bert does it for exactly that reason. He loves an argument. I have no idea how he votes, because I’ve heard him advocate both sides of every issue, sometimes in the same conversation, especially if he’s getting a rise out of somebody. And Rhonda, the ultimate cynic, always takes the bait. Add wine, and she takes it loudly.
I heard her saying, “I go with the long view. Every few years, the clowns in power end up just like the clowns who came before them—gone. The only thing that changes are the names on the payoff checks.”
I’d been here before, and it had always ended in a death spiral, so I tried to head it off. “It’s my first night back, let’s find another topic, okay?”
But Bert was ready for me. “I’ve heard when somebody gets shot, they get philosophical. I’ve never quite figured out where you stand on the death penalty, Rail. How about now?”
Pascal, the seventeenth-century mathematician, said that all of man’s troubles are caused by his inability to sit quietly in a room alone. They ought to put Bert’s picture next to Pascal’s in Wikipedia as the guy who won’t stop practicing it.
I replied, “Bert, I’m not going down this road.”
“So you’re saying you’re undecided.”
“Read any good books lately?” I answered.
Then Rhonda rode in. “I’m with Bert on this. I have no idea where you stand either.”
“And it matters because…?”
“How about, you’re a fascinating guy, and I want to know more about you. Here, I’ll help you get started. I think Texas has it right. Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out.”
Bert was smiling. “So, Rail, let’s pretend they’ve caught the guy who killed that young lady and shot you, and it’s your call what happens to him. What does?”
Rhonda turned in her chair. “Yeah, what does, Big Guy?”
“That’s why we have cops and prosecutors. So it’s not personal.”
Rhonda rolled her eyes. “Jesus, what a wimpy answer. This isn’t civics class. It’s a liquored-up bull session.”
“All the more reason,” I said evenly.
These kinds of confrontations are never about conversation, they’re about control. About getting someone to say something he didn’t set out to say. In an amateurish, ham-handed way, it’s Chapter 1, Paragraph 1 of interrogation. Establish a dialog—even if it’s hostile. Ordinary folks don’t realize that if somebody knows what he’s doing, he can manipulate other people’s emotions to the point where they will always relent—always. And afterward, if they have any IQ at all, they feel violated. There’s a clear winner, and a clear loser, and everybody knows which is which. I’ve seen these kinds of situations end in near murder.
Done by a professional, and for keeps, the interrogator stays engaged with his subject; never lets him have that down moment. Uses positive reinforcement. Food. A cigarette. Maybe tells him something about himself to develop the bond further. I’ve suffered through enough mock interrogations and conducted enough real ones to know what my weaknesses are. And wanting to please isn’t one of them. I never tell anyone anything I don’t intend to tell them. And I never discuss my personal views on a host of things. Ever.
“Answer the question, Rail, goddamn it.” Rhonda’s voice had taken on an edge I’d never heard before. An ugliness. I looked at her without smiling. But she rolled on. “Or is this the kind of thing you only discussed with your dead piece of ass.”
Sometimes a relationship ends in a heartbeat. They say that at those times, in your mind’s eye, you can see the skin tighten against the bones of the person’s face and picture them in death. That didn’t happen, but at that moment, whatever Rhonda and I had was over.
I’m not sure Bert even heard her, but Brittany did, and her face said it all. Women are always harder on other women.
I don’t believe a bellyful of hootch unlocks some secret place and lets the demons out. Anyone with reasonable intelligence knows all the forbidden words and where the dagger will do the most damage. Alcohol simply hands your mouth a permission slip. What gets selected is a function of circumstance and emotion. But even then it takes a second or two to get it out, plenty of time to check the process. So whiskey talk is mostly laziness.
To Bert, I finally said, “I’d turn the guy over to Ted Goldman. He’s the scariest person I know.”
Rhonda let out an exasperated moan.
Bert looked at her. “Who the hell is Ted Goldman?”
Brittany answered, “It’s time for us to go home.”