Gray Area (8 page)

“I’ve got to ask you to keep her here awhile longer,” he said at last.

“How long?” she said.

“I—I don’t know” he admitted.  “A case has come up.”

“A case
always
comes up, guapo,” she said softly.  She poured
more coffee.  “You can’t run by working yourself to death, Lou. 
Sonia needs you.”

“I know,” Diamond said.  He couldn’t find anything to say against
such damning truth.  He looked down, twirling his coffee cup.

Lita put her own cup down, her patient smile gone.  “Maria’s gone,
Lou.  Accept that.  I do.  My god, she was my sister.”

Diamond continued to stare at the floor.  Lita pressed
further.  “You leave for weeks.  No one knows where you are. 
The Department just tells me you’re on the job.  Whatever that means,” she
said, now angry.  “Look at you.  Look at your face.  I’m pretty
sure your job doesn’t include handing out parking tickets.”

“I’m a cop,” he mumbled.  “It gets hairy sometimes.”

“Fine.  Your job is your business.  But Lou,” she said,
reaching out to him, forcing him to look at her.  “Bury the dead.  Be
a father to your daughter.  And talk to your brother again.  It
wasn’t really his fault—”

Diamond stood at the mention of Marshall.  He reached for his
jacket.  “We
are
talking again, Lita.  That’s what this latest
case is about.”  He turned and looked at her, pleadingly this time. 
“Just a little while longer, okay?”

Lita sighed.  Another small battle fought and lost.  She stood
and kissed him on the cheek.  “Aye, hombre.  Tiene un cabeza como
bulludo.  You have head like bull.”

He smiled salaciously at her.  “Love when you talk dirty to me.”

She swatted him gently.  Diamond walked back to the terrace
door.  Sonia was again playing with the dog.  She came over to him,
dragging the willing retriever by the scruff of its neck.  A contrail of
dog drool followed them both.

“You’re going to stay with Aunt Lita for a little while longer,” he told
her, fixing her pigtail.

“I thought we were going home,” she said, disappointed.

“We will.  Daddy has some work to do first.”

“You going away again for a long time?”

“Nope.  I’ll see you on Sunday,” he said, and kissed her on the
cheek.

She hugged him suddenly, holding on to him as if there was no
tomorrow.  “Love you, Daddy.  You make me worried.” 

Diamond closed his eyes.  He just nodded, holding her tight for
another minute, until his tears dried.

TEN

Turner Sage picked him up in front of Lita’s house five minutes later, at
Diamond’s request.  The booze had caught up with him and he was in no
immediate position to drive.  As he watched Turner’s piece-o-shit ‘78
Rabbit trundle up to the curb, Diamond was aware of his hands shaking.  Really
shaking.  He shoved them into his pockets, willing (praying) for
stability. 

Turner’s expression told Diamond that he must have looked like something
that dropped out of the backside of a baby yak; he expected this gentle thought
to be communicated to him, but Turner apparently decided on a ‘no comment’
policy at the moment.  Diamond knew he was hiding it poorly—his
drinking.  Drinking, hell.  Binging.  Poisoning himself. 
Call a spade a spade.  It was Turner who found Diamond at St. John’s
Medical Center the day after Maria was murdered.  Diamond had ingested so
much bourbon in a twenty-four hour period he had suffered severe alcohol
poisoning.  Diamond had been strapped to a gurney, screaming obscenities,
oblivious to anyone and everyone around him.  It took three days for him
to be rehydrated, and another two days after that to painfully detox. 
Through it all, Turner was there. 

Yeah, Diamond thought, today I must look like chunky ka-ka, no doubt
about it. 

“My, don’t we look fresh and fetching this morning.”

“Blow me,” Diamond muttered, slamming the passenger door then turning to
glance back to the house.  Sonia was waving from the living room
window.  Diamond waved back.

“Thought I told you to take the day off,” Turner said, irritated.

Diamond turned to him and patted him on the knee.  “One day, I’ll
surprise you and head for Mexico. Disappear for six months, wallow in Tequila
and señoritas.”

Turner started the car again and screeched out of the driveway.  “I
had Ted Burke on the phone for a goddamn hour this morning.  Bitch-moaning
to me that you were sticking your nose into his case, and he didn’t give two
fuck-sticks on the dollar whose brother you are.”

Diamond scowled, staring straight ahead.  Not that Turner expected
any kind of response.  “Oh, hell, I can deal with Burke,” he said
conversationally.  “I just think you need some rest.”

“I rested, Turner,” Diamond said.  “I took a shower and closed my
eyes.  What do you want me to do next, jerk off to the Dali Lama Love
Mantra?”

“You had your ass kicked good last night,” Turner pressed, ignoring
Diamond’s contentious response. 

“I’ll live.”  Diamond decided he was being a first-class
prick.  Turner Sage didn’t need the attitude—he was one of the best
friends Diamond had, hands down, and no bullshit.  Enough was
enough.  “Look, I appreciate the lift and the drive out.”

Turner shrugged.  “Least I can do,” he mumbled and then shifted
gears.  “So you think this lady is a shooter?”

“That’s why you’re here, pal,” Diamond replied.  “To tell me there’s
a shitload of reasonable doubt.”

Diamond quickly reviewed the facts of the case, including his meeting
with Linda Baylor much earlier that morning.  He did not tell Turner about
his little tete-a-tete with his brother a few hours ago.

“Well, glad you think I’m such a good judge of character,” Turner said,
grinning again.  “I can hardly wait to meet this stunning piece of
work.  What’s her name again?”

“Linda Baylor,” Diamond said, and even saying her name filled him with an
intangible sense of annoyance.  And something else. 
Foreboding?  Premonition? 

Sexual obsession?

Diamond shuddered.  He was tired, he thought, and still appreciably
drunk.   Not drunk enough, though, and he could again feel his hands
tremble and the eerie spasms deep within the muscles of his body.  The
chills would come next.  And then … the Scaries.  Yeah.  Those
Fucking Scaries.  The Scaries were coming on to him, like they always did
when he slept too little and drank too much.  The Scaries that took their
time with him, nipping at his psyche like small, rabid pit bulls.  The
Scaries that brought with them an irrational kind of deep and profound inner
panic and doubt that literally made his skin crawl.

Go away
, S
caries
, he commanded. 
I don’t have time
for you today.  I’ve got to deal with Queen Bitch Baylor, a narcissistic
neurotic nutcase lawyer who my brother was banging in the not too distant past,
and who might, just might, have killed two people less than eight hours ago in
a deserted law library
.  

“Why don’t you see Dr. Westover?” Turner was talking again.  Again
... about his personal mental and physical health, as if he needed someone to
be concerned about both.  “You liked her, right?  I mean, after
Maria, she was a big help, you said.”

Turner Sage was the only person alive on the planet who Diamond allowed
to talk about his dead wife.  Of course, Turner Sage was the only person
alive on the planet he trusted completely.  Bar none, even Lita. 
“She was okay,” he said noncommittally.

In fact, Dr. Julie Westover and Lou Diamond went back, way back behind
the haystack, even before Maria.  When he’d first joined SRT, the good
doctor and he had shared some time together.  Close time, bed time. 
It didn’t last long.  He’d made it clear to her it wouldn’t, simply because
he wanted it that way.  It had worked well for him for forty years. 
A helluva lot of women across the globe, some good times, some not so good, but
nothing inextricably downright crappy.  He’d been a rolling stone
gathering no moss.  Hopefully causing little pain to others, and
occasionally bringing in a little joy to a few others still.  Not a bad
way to live, he had told himself for almost four decades.  No, sir, not
bad at all.

Julie, in the aftermath of their little romp, had defined him as borderline
misogynistic.  This he failed to understand inasmuch as misogyny was a
specific dislike and fear of women … failings, Lou felt, that he simply did not
possess.  He defended himself at the time by saying he was simply too busy
for committed relationships.  Too damaged, he admitted, by too much time
in the world of war.  His problem, no one else’s.

Given these grim circumstances, it was best that he, Lou Diamond, He Who
Was Destined To Be Alone, should never tarry too long in the deceptive and
ultimately disappointing arms of love.

Then he had met Maria.  The woman he married.  The woman he
loved.  The woman he would cherish till’ death did them part.  When
she was killed five years ago, Diamond was ready to die himself.  Had it
not been for Sonia he would have swallowed the .38 and moved on as he had
lived—without question, without hesitation, without recrimination. 
Quickly.  But since Sonia was still in the picture, he made the choice to
continue living.  If you could call it that. 

He called it passing time. 

Killing
time, really.  Doing the job, waking up, punching in,
going under for a few weeks, damn near getting wasted now and then by some
coked-up fuckstick, then the same thing all over again.  Killing time?

No.  More like
wasting
time.  Waiting.  Waiting
until Sonia grew up, got happy, got married.  Then his responsibility on
this level of existence would be finished.

“I talked to her today,” Turner said from somewhere far away. 
“Westover, I mean.  She said you should drop in and see her.  Anytime,
just to shoot the shit.  Told me to tell you that,” he said hopefully.

“Gee, you treat me good, Turner,” Diamond said, glancing at his watch,
noting absently that if he wasn’t a fucked-up neurotic obsessive basket case
with a gut feeling … he should ideally be in bed sleeping.  “Mind rubbing
my feet while you’re at it?”

“In your dreams, home boy,” Turner snarled good naturedly.  “Call
the lady.  The talk would do you good.”

It was not a suggestion, but a tacit order.  Diamond got the
hint.  Turner was worried about him; really worried.  And if Turner
was that worried, it meant that Department as a whole was worried,
notwithstanding the recent heroic exploits in San Pedro.  The young cop
who had seen him earlier had probably spread the word that Inspector Lou
Diamond was showering fully clothed these days. 

Great cop, everyone was sure to be saying.  But in the same
collective cop-ether, there was another certainty, not even a whisper and
barely a thought:  Lou Diamond:  Section 8 inside of a month. 
Guy’s a fuckin’ loon.  Serpico in freefall.  Going down sooner or
later.

“I’ll call Westover,” Diamond said at last.

Turner seemed satisfied.  “Good.”

ELEVEN

Because Turner had a tendency to drive like his dead grandmother, Diamond
was irritated when they finally arrived in front of Linda Baylor’s beach house
at 10:35 a.m.  For some ungodly irrational reason he felt that he was
already disappointing her—not on time for their second date, as it were. 
Asinine, he thought.  Sleep deprivation and the Scaries assaulting his
judgment.

“Nice place,” he heard Turner mutter as they walked to the front
door.  As promised, it was indeed open.  Diamond and Turner
entered.  Turner took his time, absorbing the expensive atmosphere inside
and out.

The terrace door at the other side of the enormous living room was also
open—a breeze rippled through the silk curtains.  Beyond, the Pacific
Ocean could be seen stretching out to the horizon, speckled with white caps and
the occasional sailboat.  Miles away where both sea and sky met, an
enormous tanker ship was heading south.  Maybe going to San Diego, Diamond
mused, or Mexico.  Possibly further.  For one fleeting moment,
Diamond wished he was on board, leaving everything he had ever known behind.

“Morning, Lou,” a familiar voice chimed out from directly ahead. 
Marshall turned the corner from the terrace holding a pen and writing tablet.

Diamond nodded, understanding Marshall’s presence here long before Turner
did.  “Let me guess.  You’re her attorney.”

Marshall had a bandage over his lower lip and his forehead was
bruised.  Now they really did look like brothers, Diamond noted with some
distant amusement.

“She asked me to be here,” Marshall replied coldly.  “It was last minute.” 
He turned to Turner, extended his hand politely.  “Turner.  It’s been
awhile.”

“That it has.  Hurt yourself?” Turner shock Marshall’s hand,
grasping it a minute longer than necessary.

Marshall glanced at his brother, then smiled his best shark smile at
Turner.  “Cut myself shaving.”

“Hate that,” Turner came back quickly.  Both men laughed.  A
little preamble bullshit, everyone knew it, no big deal.  Diamond could
see that Turner believed Marshall’s ‘cut myself shaving’ horse poop about as
much as he did in space aliens.

“Where is she, Marshall?” Diamond’s impatience was kicking in once again.

Marshall turned and indicated the beach beyond the outside veranda. 
Lou and Turner took the invite and walked through the terrace doors. 

Linda Baylor was just coming out of the water some hundred yards down the
beach, clearly finishing a brisk morning dip.  She was also completely
nude (gee, what a surprise, Diamond thought) … and not the least bit interested
in concealing herself from anyone or anything that might have noticed. 
She walked leisurely over to her robe further up the sand bank, picked it up
and then did a little stretch to the sun.  Sea foam dripped off of her and
twinkled as the morning sun caught the spray here and there.