Obstruction of Justice (14 page)

A 1959 Pontiac Catalina, Paul thought with satisfaction.

"Sorry," he said. "I was just looking for you. Thought you might be out back." He walked over to the car, looked at the headlights. Not a ding. He looked at the windshield. Nothing he could see. "This is some car."

"Who are you?" the man demanded. He was about thirty, pink-faced, balding fast, wearing wraparound sunglasses and carrying a lunch box.

"My name’s Paul van Wagoner. Are you Mr. Bright?"

"Yes."

"I’m a private investigator, Mr. Bright. May I talk to you for a minute?"

"What about?"

"Your car."

"What about my car? What’s this about?"

"Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Bright. I’m looking for a previous owner. It’s got nothing to do with you."

"Oh. Well, I just drove thirty-five miles on the freeway, and I had a long day at the office. My wife and kids will be home soon. So why don’t you come back after supper."

"I just flew five hundred miles and drove another fifty to see you as soon as I could, Mr. Bright. Give me a break. It’s too hot to stand around out here. Let’s go inside."

Bright looked at Paul’s rental car, and said, "Never drive in a convertible around here in August. You’ll get sunstroke. Only tourists drive convertibles. The sun’s too strong to ride around like that. Wheel gets too hot to touch, and the vinyl seats on that thing, they’ll—"

"You’re telling me," Paul said.

"Oh, well. Come on out to the lanai."

Paul followed Bright out to the concrete patio he had already seen, passing through small boxy rooms, stepping over a Slinky and various stuffed animals. The backyard consisted of a tall red fence surrounding a treeless square of crabgrass. The barren patio was shaded by a roof of garden trellising. Paul sat down in one of the folding chairs, his stomach still sloshing from the sodas.

"Be right back," Bright said.

In no time he was back in a pair of plaid shorts, holding two tall glasses of ice water. He asked for Paul’s license and scrutinized the picture. Then he leaned back in his chair and said, "I always thought buying the Catalina would come back to haunt me. The price was too cheap. I suppose it was stolen."

"What makes you think that?"

"There’s no such thing as a bargain. I let myself be bamboozled, I guess. Do I have to give it back, or what? I’ve put a lot of money into it. I really love it. Is there any way I can keep it?"

"It’s an interesting choice of vehicle," Paul said. "Why did you want it in the first place?"

"Yeah, it costs a bundle to operate," Bright said with a laugh. "My wife said I was crazy, but when we all get in the car and drive down to Huntington Beach on Saturdays, she loves it. Everybody on the street stares. At work, they all know Bryan’s way-cool V8 with fins. I sit in a cubicle all day at a gray desk with a beige phone and a tan computer and a dipshit younger than me looking over my shoulder, and I live like everybody else." He motioned toward the house. "But my car, now, that’s a whole other story."

Paul nodded sympathetically, thinking about his love affair with his own Dodge Ram van.

"This is L.A. You wouldn’t believe how much time you spend in your car. At parties here they don’t ask what do you do, they ask what do you drive.

"I’ve lived here in the ’burbs all my life," Bright went on, tinkling the ice in his glass. "All over Whittier, Pico Rivera, Norwalk, La Mirada, a few years in the San Fernando Valley, a year in Orange County. If they built a new tract, my parents wanted to move into it. They came from the South after the war and thought they’d found paradise. They couldn’t wait to cut off their past. I grew up thinking everybody came out of nowhere, and every year we’d move on to another suburb just like the one we’d left, a few miles farther out where the orange groves used to be. All the history and routines got lost in the moves, you know what I mean?"

"Some people want that."

"Not me. It bothered me. I knew I lacked soul, Paul." This was said with such lugubrious earnestness that even Paul felt subdued.

"Why didn’t you leave when you got older, if you don’t like it?" he asked.

"Who says I don’t? It’s a good place to raise kids. You know they’ll get lots of exercise, lots of time outdoors. I don’t know any place better. They’ll never see a cockroach or see anybody dealing drugs on the corner, at least in this neighborhood. They’re protected here. They think going to the mall and watching Baywatch is what life’s all about. It’s comfortable here. But..."

"Safe and sanitary," Paul said. He let his eyes wander over the yard. In the next yard, on the other side of the fence, he could see a shower of water coming, then going, then coming back, and hear the whap whap whap whap of a mechanical lawn sprinkler. The day had finally begun to cool and the sky had cleared to a Technicolor blue.

He felt as if he knew Bryan Bright. He could have been Bryan Bright, going off to work and coming home again and raising his kids and golfing on Sundays in weather that was always dry, always sunny, until he dried up completely, and then he would take his last drive in a hearse to Rose Lawn Cemetery and be taken up to a heaven where a wizened God wears shorts over his skinny legs and drinks ice water and putts better than any angel....

Bryan, too, was waxing reflective. "Sometimes at night I would think, what am I doing here, what’s unique about me? You know? Who is Bryan Bright, anyway? I’m not a religious type. I can’t get into that New Age shit. I didn’t know where to look. Finally, I looked inside myself. It was like a big TV set in there, Paul, lots of ads and brand names and my job and house and family, but no sign of me, you know, Paul?

"So one day I told my wife I was going up to Lake Tahoe by myself. She didn’t understand that. ’Never mind, I’m going,’ I said. ’That’s that.’ I was driving a Nissan Sentra with seventy thousand miles on it. I went up there and saw the trees and the mountains. On about the third day I was sitting on the rocks overlooking Emerald Bay, and something happened. Inside my head, I mean. I realized for the very first time that I was me. I became aware of myself. Anything like that ever happened to you? UFOs, mystical shit?"

"No such luck."

"When I came out of it, I knew something heavy had happened. I knew who Bryan Bright is. And I wanted to express who I am. So people would know I’m different from the next guy." He jabbed his thumb at his chest for emphasis. He had propped his legs on a low white plastic table. He flapped the bottoms of his rubber thongs against the soles of his feet for a time, in rhythm with the sprinkler next door.

Paul crunched ice cubes and let him be. Bright wanted to talk. Let him talk.

"I decided to buy a car," Bright said.

"So you went looking for a car up there at Tahoe?"

"I talked to a few salesmen, yeah, I did. I didn’t know what I was looking for at first. It couldn’t cost too much; I’ve got the mortgage and the kids, even though Debs works too— Shoot, I hear the car out there, you took her parking space...."

Paul got up and said, "I’ll move it."

Bright got up too. "You’re probably planning to eat at some fancy restaurant tonight," he said a little shyly.

"No. No, I didn’t have any plans."

"You could eat with us. I have to get busy now. The kids will be hungry."

"Great." Paul moved his car, introduced himself to Mrs. Bright, and offered to lug a sack of groceries from her minivan back up the walkway to the house. Three kids galloped around him and he heard the TV sputter to life in the living room. Mrs. Bright gave him a harried smile from the kitchen, where her husband was already turning on the oven and getting out paper plates. They kissed and started the dinner, giving Paul the chore of scraping carrots.

Mrs. Bright had the slightly mad eyes of any woman with three small children who also holds down a full-time job. She had apparently decided that Paul was a golf buddy of Bryan’s who had turned up to visit. She went into the bedroom, appearing shortly afterward in a flowered shift, barefoot. They sat down on the couch in front of the TV and watched Jeopardy! while the dinner cooked.

Then they ate fish sticks, carrot sticks, and french fries with a whole lot of ketchup while Wheel of Fortune was on.

When a cartoon show came on and Mrs. Bright, yawning, headed off to do laundry, Bryan said, "Paul and I are going out for a little spin in the Cat. Is that okay?"

"I forgot toilet tissue," she said.

"Yeah, okay, I’ll pick some up."

"Oh, and eggs. And maybe some Popsicles for the kids for their bedtime snack."

"Okay."

The two men walked out to the car. Overbright streetlights shone down on the identical houses with their identical yards, on the empty streets. Bryan opened the door for Paul, and he got into the front seat.

The seats were a mile wide. Paul could sit straight without the top of his head brushing the ceiling, the expansive space and springy cushions combining to create the same comfort as a luxurious limo. The engine started up like a pride of lions sighting a plump zebra.

The big car cruised sedately down the block, emitting a steady stream of pollutants.

"The Cat, we call her."

"Mmm-hmm."

"The salesman, Mr. El-Barouki, took care of everything. The seller didn’t want to have to deal directly with me, and didn’t want to put it through the lot. So when I started asking around, saying I was looking for something different but not very expensive, Mr. El-Barouki took me out to his house. He has at least seven kids. Debs isn’t real clear about the details, so I didn’t want to get into this in front of her."

"Sure."

"The minute I saw it in his garage, I knew it was what I had been looking for. Different. Nobody else buys these things. He said I could have it for two thousand, but it would have to be on a salvage certificate. You know what that is?"

"Not exactly."

"Well, the seller sold it to a junkyard and told the DMV it was totaled. Then the junkyard sold it to me, only the junkyard was listed as owner and the registration process sort of starts over from scratch. What a chore. But I kept going back to the DMV down here, and finally I had the new registration."

"Do you still have your old paperwork?" Paul said.

"It’s in here somewhere." Bryan dug around the glove compartment with one hand and came up with a grimy envelope.

Opening it, Paul found many repair slips, the new registration, and the salvage certificate, listing Gregory El-Barouki as the junkyard owner. "The salesman’s brother?" Paul said.

"That’s right. I forgot." None of the papers mentioned the name of the person who had delivered the "totaled" car to the junkyard. Paul, who had just called all the auto wrecking yards in the area, didn’t recognize the name. The "junkyard" was probably a backyard.

"I’d like to make copies of these."

They pulled into a row of stores under strong parking lot lights. "The copy place is right over there," Bryan said. "I’ll hit the store."

When they were back in the car and patrolling the boundlessly tedious neighborhoods once more, Paul said, "Did you ever see or talk to the seller?"

"Nope."

"Did El-Barouki ever mention his name, address, anything like that?"

"I don’t think so."

"Didn’t you ask him anything about why the car was being sold as salvage when it obviously wasn’t totaled?"

"It was understood," Bryan said. "If I wanted the car, I wouldn’t ask questions like that. Oh, I knew it would come back on me. I knew it was wrong. Who was it stolen from?"

"Nobody. But it may have been involved in a hit-and-run accident."

"Somebody die?"

"Yes. "

"Oh, shoot. Shoot. Now I really feel bad."

"I’m going to need the car."

"What? You can’t stroll in here and take my car!"

Paul told him about the police investigation, the death. Then he said, "Look, you can deal with me or you can deal with the police, because they’re sure going to hear about it. But I’m sure you’ll go for the better deal with me."

"But what about the money I put in?"

Paul said, "Tell you what. I need to have some tests run on the car. Maybe it’s the wrong car. You’ll have it back in a few weeks if it is."

"Did I break some law?" Bryan said. "I can’t afford—you know, they’re downsizing at work, any excuse—and Debs is pregnant again, she just told me last week."

"You didn’t know about anything illegal," Paul said. "If anybody got taken, it was you. So don’t worry. Look, I’ll take the Catalina tonight, drive it upstate, and have it tested. I’ll give you a receipt and my card. There’s a chance it’s not even the right car. You can drive the rental car I came in to work, and—"

"Debs can pick me up after work and we’ll drop it off at the rental place," Bryan said mournfully. "Okay."

"If it turns out not to be the car, you’ll get it back with a nice shine job. Scout’s honor."

They parked out in front, leaving the motor running. The porch light cast a yellow glow out onto the crabgrass. Bright filled a box with personal things, stowing it on the porch next to the bikes. They traded car keys and Paul said, "Thanks for cooperating with me on this, Bryan. You could have made it a lot harder."

"I’ll never find another one like the Cat." He adjusted the side mirror and stroked the hood.

"Probably not."

"I tell you my dad drove one kind of like this? Black, like I painted this one. Always overheated on the way to Vegas." Popping the lid, he peered into the engine compartment. He pulled out the oil dip stick, wiping it right on his pants, and checked the level.

"I’ll be careful going up Interstate 5," Paul said.

"Don’t worry, I had the radiator rebuilt." He unscrewed the radiator cap and peeked inside. Seeming satisfied at what he saw there, he slammed the hood down.

"The spare’s good. You can find the jack."

"Sure I can, Bryan."

A deep sigh expanded Bright’s slight potbelly. He let air out in a whoosh. "Who was I trying to kid, making out like I was something special? It was all a fake. The Cat was never really mine."

"It wasn’t all a fake. Not the part at Emerald Bay."

"That was the fakest thing of all."