ANDY SPENT THE NIGHT and half of the next day sitting with Nick. Watched the monitors and the rise and fall of his brother’s chest. Thought about what David had done. Or God. Or a miracle of medicine.
When he couldn’t sit and think one minute longer, Andy trudged to the waiting room. Bought coffee from the machine. Asked about the condition of Cory Bonnett. Critical. No change. No change. He wandered the floors and finally came to Bonnett’s room, easily identified by the uniformed San Diego sheriff’s deputies standing outside. They turned him away ten feet from the door and gave him no information whatsoever.
Back in the waiting room lobby Andy poured dimes into the pay phone trying to get information on the car chase and the shoot-out. The more calls he made the less he understood what had happened.
He couldn’t locate a single witness. He found no reports except one-Lobdell’s. Bonnett’s friends had allegedly sped away in a stolen pickup truck, but Lobdell hadn’t been able to get the plates. There were no stolen vehicle reports taken that night in National City. Nobody knew where Nick’s “shot-up” Country Squire wagon was. Or why he had driven his personal car to arrest an international fugitive at the border. Andy began to understand that Lobdell was lying.
National City Police were evasive. Chula Vista Police spent three hours “confirming” his employment at the Orange County Journal. The San Diego Sheriff’s public information line rang, then went dead over and over. The Orange County Sheriff’s was just as cool and uninformative as they’d been since the day Andy had criticized his brother in print as ordered by Jonas Dessinger.
Nick drifted in and out of consciousness. Andy sat with Katy and the kids. Had lunch with them in the cafeteria. Max and Monika, too. Max tender with the grandchildren. Monika tense as a plucked guitar string.
After lunch Andy saw Sharon Santos crossing the lobby to the desk. Another miracle, Andy thought, that Katy and the kids were in with Nick right then. He headed Sharon off and told her Nick was going to make it. Told Sharon that if Katy saw her she’d put two and two together in about one second. Walked Sharon back to her car.
David had left the night before as if his mission was completed and his skills needed elsewhere. He appeared stoic and unsurprised. Resigned. This mystified Andy, who had hoped to write with insight about the miraculous recovery of his brother. But there wasn’t much to see into. All he had to go on was David’s brief narrative of what had happened in the operating room after Nick had died.
God brought him back to life.
The doctors and nurses were as puzzled as Andy, but vibrantly pleased. All said this kind of thing happens. Some suggested that the heart monitor was somehow at fault.
No one answered David’s office or home phones.
Just after two that afternoon Jonas Dessinger demanded by phone that Andy file a more detailed story than last night’s “prick teaser.” He wanted it by 5 P.M. for tomorrow. And he wanted to know why none of the San Diego County papers had run a story about the hero Nick Becker. Maybe the story from Lobdell was bullshit. Maybe he was covering something up.
Dessinger ordered Andy to get Cory Bonnett’s side of things if the suspect didn’t croak first.
Teresa’s secretary told him that she had gone home sick. Andy let the phone at their house ring for over a minute but nobody answered. She had sounded fine when he talked to her late last night. Although loaded. Kept asking him when he was coming home. Their wine-and-pot nights often left Andy wobbly in the morning, but Teresa usually popped right out of bed like an Olympian in training. Maybe she’d picked up a flu bug.
Andy had just hung up when he saw a red Country Squire station wagon roll past the smoked lobby windows. Thick layer of tan dust on it. A side window frame crusted with blown-out safety glass. Lobdell with one hand on the wheel and the other dangling a cigarette out the window.
Andy intercepted him halfway to the lobby.
“How is he?” asked Lobdell.
“Okay. Serious but the vitals all steady.”
“We gotta talk,” said Lobdell. Face and shirt and glasses caked with tan dust.
“I think so.”
“Let’s sit in the wagon.”
Lobdell gave him the Mexico story just once. Wouldn’t let Andy take notes. Wouldn’t let him interrupt. Wouldn’t let him ask questions. But Andy listened and the story held tight, made sense from the friend named Cortazar to the white-handled switchblade, and Andy knew the truth when he heard it.
“You can’t print one word of it,” said Lobdell. He was sweating profusely and smelled bad. “It’ll ruin Nick and me. Make deep trouble for the sheriff, maybe even the U.S. government. Probably get Bonnett off. You gotta go with the story I told you last night. Play it down and let it go away. Stop pestering the cops and the deputies down here. They’re with me for now, but any pressure and they can’t cover. This isn’t any of your business. Nick and I got our man. The public doesn’t care so long as justice gets done. You stay out of it.”
“I understand.”
“You have to more than understand it, Andy.”
Andy stared down at the dusty dashboard of the Red Rocket. Noted the thin, sticky blood on the seat between his legs. Turned to see the two blown-out side windows. Looked out the smeared windshield at the bright October day.
He could lie for Nick. Probably get it past Dessinger if he created a source or two, manufactured a few quotes, maybe got Katy to say why Nick and Lobdell had taken down the family car. Bury Dessinger in details, invented or not. Yes, he could probably get away with it, for now. It would be an act of bravery. The same as the rumble by the packinghouse when he was a kid, jumping Lenny Vonn. But Andy knew he wasn’t a child anymore and this lie would not be a child’s thing. It might cost him his career. It would surely lump him in with the politicians and police and businessmen and bureaucrats and thieves and hustlers and murderers he wrote about. With anyone who put what was practical ahead of what was true. It would finally make him a part of the corruption that had always stabbed his sense of right and wrong.
And what would happen to the truth? You couldn’t treat it like that. It was too big to go away. Too strong. It would never stay down, no matter how high you piled the lies on top. It would bust loose someday, huge and furious, and it would bite off and spit out the heads of everyone who had tried to keep it down. And how would he explain why he had done such a thing? So a couple of cops could break the law they had sworn to uphold?
“You and Nick mess up and I’ve got to toss eight years of honest reporting to cover you.”
“It’s a real pile of shit, Andy. There’s eight dead men. Eight! How many widows and fatherless children does that make-thirty or forty? I don’t even know.”
“You saved Nick.”
“He’d have done the same,” said Lobdell. “It’s just reflex. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Andy wasn’t sure he understood this. “I’ll go with your story,” he said.
“You’re doing a good thing even if you don’t see it.”
“I never thought lies were good,” said Andy.
“You change when you get older.”
“I feel older now. Feel like I learned something I don’t want to know. I feel like hiding.”
“Same shit Adam went through before God kicked him out of paradise.”
“I feel thoroughly kicked out.”
“Me, too,” said Lobdell. “I can’t even remember what it looked like. How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Get married and have children. It’ll distract you.”
Andy sighed and looked back again at the shattered windows, the layer of dust on the camping gear. “I want some pictures of this car for the Journal.”
“Worth a thousand words.”
“You ditch the surfboards and shoot out the windows and spill some chicken blood before you drove it back?”
“Hamburger. Just for you.”
ANDY MADE his desk by four and started writing. He was tired but his thoughts were clear and his fingers flew over the keys of the Selectric. He watched the whole chase and shoot-out unfold in his mind. Saw Bonnett swing the knife into Nick’s body. Watched Lobdell struggle Nick and Bonnett into the Country Squire. Heard the big station wagon burning through the streets of Chula Vista on the way to Bay Hospital. Saw the monitor in Nick’s hospital room start to blip. Saw the quiver of fresh life in his eyelid. Heard the catch of breath in the nurse’s throat. Saw the stupefaction in David’s face. He finished the story at 4:55. Triple-spaced, eighteen pages. Thrilling as a movie, he thought, and about as true.
Tried Teresa at home again but no answer. Noted that Chas Birdwell wasn’t in his cubicle. Called the hospital and got an upgrade to “serious condition” for Cory Bonnett.
Went into Jonas’s office and said he had a totally bitchin’ story. It had bullets, blood, and a hero who died and came back to life. A murder suspect in critical condition. It was even true. All he’d need was ten more minutes to double-check a few facts and corroborate an eyewitness account of the shoot-out in National City.
“It really went down like that?” asked Dessinger.
“Wait till you see my pictures of the car.”
Dessinger eyed him. Hard suspicion versus publishing a great story. Andy stared back with all the blankness he could muster.
“Sit down,” said Dessinger.
Andy sat but the associate publisher remained standing.
“Becker, the Laguna cops have a suspect in the Boom Boom Bungalow murder. They don’t have enough to arrest him yet. But they’re doing a lineup tomorrow for a witness who was there. Ten in the morning. Nobody knows this but the cops, the Sheriff’s, and us. What I figured was, you could shoot the suspect coming into the jail. Hit him with some questions. It’ll be our last chance if they arrest him after the lineup. I enjoy those pictures where the guy tries to squeeze through a doorway before the photog nails him. Or they hide behind a coat or briefcase.”
Andy felt a sudden childlike satisfaction in lying hugely to this man and getting away with it.
“You know where they bring them in and out for a lineup, don’t you?” asked Dessinger.
“If they haven’t arrested him, they’ll bring him in through the professional visits entrance. Where the lawyers come and go.”
“Be there.”
“We don’t usually do that, Jonas. We don’t go public with a simple questioning. Not unless an arrest is made.”
Dessinger smiled. “But I have a good feeling about this one.”
“Who’s the suspect?”
“You’ll love this. A Tustin High School football coach and history teacher. Howard Langton.”
Andy was always impressed that Jonas actually kept sources and got good information. Hard to believe anyone would trust him.
“I interviewed Langton a couple of weeks ago by phone,” Andy said. “Janelle Vonn lived with him and his family back when she was in high school. He was her civics teacher.”
“I know.”
“What if Langton wasn’t at the Boom Boom, Jonas?”
A trace of confusion crossed Dessinger’s face, then passed. “Hell, Becker, what if he was?”
As he walked back to his desk, a vague but unpleasant sensation spread inside Andy. A feeling that something horrible had just been brought closer to his understanding. Family man Howard Langton questioned in the murder of a man in a gay motel? On the same night a girl who used to live with him was decapitated? Going to put a nasty rash on Langton’s reputation, even if the witness is wrong and Janelle was a coincidence. Stink sticks. High School Football Coach Questioned in Boom Boom Bungalow Murder.
Chas Birdwell’s cubicle was still empty. One of the other reporters told him that Chas had called in sick that morning but had sounded pretty damned healthy.
ANDY FILED his story with Jonas and banged out a brief rewrite. Filed the rewrite, locked up his desk, and headed across the parking lot to his Corvair.
The evening was cool. Just a soft hiss from the palm trees along Newport Boulevard, almost lost in the louder hiss of car tires on the asphalt. Sleeplessness hit him like a drug.
But he mustered the energy to swing by the Seven Seas Motel in Newport. It was a sun-faded old place that advertised “Free TV and Refrigeration.” He’d seen it a thousand times in his life, maybe more, on his hitchhiking trips from Tustin to Newport Beach as a boy. With its silhouette of a blue sailboat against a full white moon, it had once seemed romantic. Maybe that was why it stuck in his head a couple of weeks ago when Teresa joked about it with Chas on the phone. Her good buddy Chas, who couldn’t do a rewrite correctly, let alone an original newspaper article.
Andy pulled into the Seven Seas parking lot and followed it around back. Stopped and looked up. The window to 207 upstairs was open. Thin blue curtain puffing in and out. Teresa’s new black Mustang directly below it and Chas Birdwell’s restored yellow Porsche Speedster taking up two spaces in the far corner of the lot. The ocean breeze had blown Chas’s car cover into a heap on the lee side of the Porsche.
Clever, thought Andy. Seven Seas time. Fooled me.
He drove home. Packed a few things. Loaded his manuscripts and typewriter into the Corvair trunk and locked it. Drained a large glass of scotch. Then another.
Called Lynette Vonn.
Andy’s heart beat fast with the velocity of counterdumping Teresa. This was Mutual Assured Destruction. He’d never done anything like it.
“I thought I could take you to dinner tonight,” he said.
“I’m working the Bear. Jesse Black’s playing. I can’t get you in free but I can get you a good seat.”
“I don’t want to get in free.”
Andy was surprised by his own tone of voice. By how damned mad he was.
“It’s your scene, man,” said Lynette.
Andy slammed the front door and walked to the Corvair. Looked back at his and Teresa’s place with the giant bird-of-paradise and plantain trees in front. Looked different now. Shabby, not cute. She’d probably fire him. Save her cousin the trouble. Good. He’d go to the Times or the Register. Goddamned Chas Birdwell. IQ of what, fifty?
Andy got in. Rolled down the windows and lowered the top. Buttoned the boot. Tore down Cress, then up Coast Highway past Mystic Arts World and Janelle’s yellow cottage and the old Laguna greeter with his wild gray hair waving at everyone like some demented St. Peter at the gates of heaven on earth. Flogged the noisy little Corvair for Huntington Beach with the police band radio turned up loud.
HE GOT a stool near the back. Lynette brought him a scotch and a beer, said she’d move him up for Jesse. She looked less stoned than when he’d last seen her. Hair up and shiny and a petite sleekness to her that he remembered. Miniskirt, nice legs.
A little man sat onstage with a guitar. Strummed away, not a bad voice. A folkie song about love and the end of the world. Made Andy’s skin crawl.
“Who’s this guy?”
“Charles something,” said Lynette. “He’s supposed to be cool.”
“I’ll bet. Cowboy boots that tiny, you have to be cool.”
She looked at him with an expression that assumed the worst. Andy figured it was her go-to look, honed over twenty-one years as a molested girl, a biker, a junkie.
“You know,” she said, “I really don’t want any trouble.”
“You won’t get any from me.”
She read his face and the circumstances like a headline. “What, you broke up with your baby?”
“Kinda.”
“Don’t get me in the middle of it.”
“I don’t want you in the middle of it.”
“Then why are you sitting here in my nightclub?”
Andy took a deep breath. Looked at Charles something. Long hair and scruffy beard.
“I’m trying to gain cruising altitude,” Andy said. “I thought you were pretty.”
“My sister was pretty. I’m plain.”
“I disagree.”
“Is this about her or me? I want an answer exactly right now.”
Andy studied her. Could lie to her easy enough. Like he’d just lied to the Journal. But he knew the truth would come up and groin him sooner or later. Sooner, by the hard look on Lynette Vonn’s face.
“Both.”
Something then issued behind her hardness. Pride in herself, as separate from her sister. And a pleased acknowledgment that Andy was good enough to sense her separate value.
“I’m better than a lie detector,” said Lynette. “I was bummed you wouldn’t stay with me that night. I liked that you put the blanket on me.”
“And the gun by the Cap’n Crunch?”
“I don’t usually do that. The gun, and that much hash. You’d made me a little nervous.”
Her smile tickled him in a minor way. He felt his anger inch over just a little, like a fat man making room on a bench.
“I’ll move you up when Jesse plays.”
TEN MINUTES later the tiny man onstage stood and bowed. Hardly any applause. He stood there in the stage lights with a wild-eyed glare. Then he slung his guitar over one shoulder and flipped off the audience.
The overly chipper PA voice said, “Let’s hear it for Charles Manson, down from L.A. after recording with the Beach Boys!”
A couple of boos. People getting up, chairs scraping.
“Fuck Orange County!” called out the singer. “You can smell the Birchers a hundred miles away.”
“Smell your BO,” someone called.
More boos then as the little man wrenched himself and his guitar backstage.
Five minutes later Charlie Manson leaned his guitar case on the bar and climbed into the stool next to Andy. Smelled like weed and beer. He curled his legs onto the cushion and sat on them to seem taller.
“You know Lynette?” asked Manson. “I saw you talking to her.”
“She’s a friend.”
“I’m going to get her to take me home tonight,” said Manson.
“I don’t see how.” Andy figured he could provoke tiny Charlie but the singer just smiled.
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Charlie. “Nobody belongs to anybody. That’s just middle-class bullshit. I know another Lynette and she’s a fox, too. This here Lynette’s sister was the beauty queen who got her head lifted. Weird and ugly shit, but life evolves through things like that. Darwin proved it. That’s true about me and the Beach Boys, you know. Dennis Wilson’s a good friend. I cowrote ‘Never Learn Not to Love’ with him. I was going to do it as an encore but fuck these Republicans. You probably heard it on the radio.”
“Once.”
Manson stared at him. Theatrical eyes, glassy and penetrating. Almost made up for how short he was. “You don’t like music?”
“Some of it I do.”
“You like the Monkees? You know, that mod prefab crap they give you on TV?”
“I thought ‘I’m a Believer’ was a good song.”
“A good song? I auditioned for that show. Producers told me I’d have had a part if I was a little younger. I said, Bob, Bert-I can change just about anything but my age. So they gave it to Micky Dolenz.”
“Was that the one with the cap?”
“No, no. That was Nesmith. What are you drinking? Looks expensive. Why don’t you buy me one?”
Andy sensed a straight line to trouble. He had already vowed to prevent Lynette from taking this guy home.
“Sure.”
“Here, take one of these. Be worth something someday.”
Charlie dug into the pocket of his work shirt and handed Andy a guitar pick that said “Charlie Manson” on it.
“I get ’em free from Dennis’s friend.”
LYNETTE MOVED Andy and Charlie closer for the Jesse Black set. Put them at a front table full of girls who squirmed and squealed when Black came onstage. Andy recognized orange-haired Crystal from Black’s crash cottage at Big Red. He nodded to her but her glazed eyes moved across him without registration.
“This guy’s the real thing,” said Charlie. “Gets more chicks than Ringo. He’ll be a star if he can learn how to sing. Sounds like he’s got toilet paper stuck in his throat sometimes.”
Black played four songs with just his guitar or piano, then brought out a band. Andy sensed less melancholy in the music than he had at the Sandpiper two nights after Janelle was murdered. Faster stuff now, driving and sexual and funny. Songs about the road and the groupies and the loneliness you got used to.
They closed with a rocker called “Hit the Highway,” and let the crowd call them back for a happily chaotic version of “Louie, Louie” sung in Spanish. They waved and disappeared again but the crowd stood and yelled them out for one more.
This time it was just Black and his guitar for “Imagine You.”
“Gives me goose bumps,” said Manson. “It’s about Lynette’s sister.”
It gave Andy goose bumps, too. “Don’t take Lynette home tonight,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll kick the shit out of you if you try.”
“That’s bourgeoisie bullshit, man.”
“It’ll still hurt.”
ANDY SAT in the back at the bar for the second show. Had several more drinks than he should have. Saw the pay phones back by the rest rooms and thought about calling Teresa at home. She had probably noticed his things missing by now. Probably put them together with Seven Seas time. Probably hopped over to Chas’s place to celebrate. Thought about calling Meredith but didn’t do that, either.
He called Katy for a report on Nick. Nick was stable and talking. She’d brought the children home that afternoon. Katy went on at length about the miracle that the Lord had worked through David. A priest from a local parish had actually come by to view him. Nick, that is. Like he was a shroud or a bleeding crucifix or something. Andy listened to her and watched the room undulate. Saw dinky Charlie still up there with the Black girls, chattering away while they tried to ignore him.
He called Bay Hospital for a report on Bonnett. Stable and improving. He called Lobdell because he thought the detective would like to know that the elaborate lie he’d written for tomorrow’s Journal was finished and filed.
Lobdell grunted. Said the sooner they could all forget about it the better, and hung up.
After the show Andy waited outside for Lynette. The crowd surged into the fresh air, bleary-eyed and rich with the smells of smoke and alcohol. It was almost midnight and a light fog had settled. The cars on Coast Highway looked to be in slow motion. Andy saw he could easily run out there. Dodge them like a matador and never get hit. Use his shirt for a capa. Beyond the sluggish cars he saw the pier vanishing into the mist. The lights receding out to sea. Only the alcohol and a waning lust for trouble kept him on his feet.
Charlie came out with Lynette and two of the Black fans. Strutted across the parking lot with a big smile on his face. Dwarfed by the women. Even his guitar case seemed unusually large.
“We’re off to Lynette’s for a party,” said Charlie. “You ought to come with us.”
“I told you not to,” said Andy.
“Then out of my way, you dumb prick.”
It was like everything he hated happening at once: Clay and JFK, and how he’d treated Meredith, and Janelle in the packinghouse, and the thing Dessinger made him write about Nick, and the Stoltzes and their Orange Sunshine, and what was happening to his parents, and the eighteen thousand dead just like Clay and more dying every day, and destroying the village in order to save it, and the big Lobdell lie, and Seven Seas time. A convergence of everything he despised and wished he could change and knew he never could.
He grabbed Charlie by hair and crotch. Swung him around four times. The guitar case sailed out and crashed on a car. A woman screamed. Andy timed his release of Charlie to take him into the brick wall of the Golden Bear. Leaned back, bent his knees, and let go. Charlie hit hard, a bug on a windshield. Then crunched to the parking lot cursing quietly.
“Oh wow,” said one of the Black fans.
“Is he all right?” asked another.
Andy lost his balance when he let go of Manson. Next thing he knew Lynette had a hold of his arm and was pulling him across the parking lot. Cars wobbling around him. Faces in a swirl. Moon zigging and zagging with each step, stars flying like mosquitoes.
“That’s a badass dude,” she said. “He’s done time and he’s got friends.”
“Bring ’em on.”
“Oh man, there’s the pigs. Andy, stand up! My car’s right across the street.”
The last thing Andy remembered seeing that night was the green shag carpet of Lynette’s living room rising up to meet him.
AT QUARTER TO TEN the next morning he was standing outside the professional visits door at the Orange County jail. He stank and his clothes were wrinkled and he had the worst hangover of his life.
He fumbled a fresh roll of film into his Leica. Checked his watch. Felt the steady pounding in his head. Each throb capped with a high-pitched ping like a blacksmith’s hammer ringing off an anvil. Couldn’t believe Teresa. Couldn’t believe he’d thrown a tiny folksinger against the wall of the Golden Bear. Relieved he hadn’t slept with Lynette, though not exactly sure why he was relieved.
At ten sharp Howard Langton came walking up. It took Andy a second to make him. A baseball cap pulled down low and sunglasses and a big varsity jacket. Shoulders hunched up, head pointed straight ahead at the entrance.
Andy raised the Leica, dialed the coach into focus, and shot. The flash made Langton flinch. He stopped completely and his mouth opened. Andy shot him again. Talked with the camera still to his face and his left hand keeping the focus good and his right finger clicking away.
“Coach Langton, were you at the Boom Boom Bungalow the night of the murder?”
“What the…Andy?”
“Andy Becker, Orange County Journal. Is it true that a witness has placed you at the Boom Boom murder scene?”
“I don’t…there’s no way…I can’t talk to you. Don’t take pictures! That’s absolutely-”
“Coach Langton, were you at the Boom Boom Bungalow that night or weren’t you?”
“I never even saw Adrian Stalling!”
“But were you there?”
“I was there but…that’s missing the whole goddamned point!”
Langton came at him fast. Compact, muscular, balanced. Andy swung open the professional visits door, knowing the sign-in deputy would be there. Shot another picture of the coach as he saw the uniform just inside the door.
Langton stopped again. The deputy looked at him, then at Andy.
“Press isn’t supposed to be here,” he said. “Get out of here, Andy. They’re expecting you, Mr. Langton.”
Langton stood there, just a few feet shy of the open door. Like a guy stuck in a nightmare where he can’t move, thought Andy. Only worse because this isn’t a dream.
“Don’t write about this until it’s over,” said Langton.
“Why not?”
“It’s all a big mistake. You just don’t see it yet.”
“See what?”
“You don’t understand. It’s for your own good, Andy. Don’t write. Don’t run pictures. I’m telling you not to do it. For your family and yourself.”
“Got it,” said Andy.
“No, I can see you don’t.”
Andy shot one more picture. Let go of the door and trotted back out to the parking lot. The Leica strap jerked with each step and Andy held the camera to ease the great percussions pulsing through his head. Made no difference at all.
HE SHOWERED and shaved at the family house in Tustin. Monika made him a big lunch while he told her what had happened. His heart ached more now than in the Seven Seas parking lot. Monika said that things always happened for a reason.
Driving away, Andy thought of Meredith. Remembered that Thanksgiving with the Vonns. How absolutely he had loved her, then didn’t. How he’d left her to see more of the world and write about it. Traded her for Seven Seas time. It pleased him that she had gotten what she wanted, the husband and the children and the house.
He turned up the radio and gunned the Corvair down Fourth Street.
He was at his desk at the Journal by noon. Three phone message slips that Teresa had called. He whisked them into his trash basket and called the Laguna cops.
Andy’s buddy at the LBPD told him strictly off the record that Langton had been picked in the lineup. They were set to talk to him again this afternoon. They weren’t in any hurry because Langton wasn’t a flight risk. Family man fooling around at the Boom Boom, heh-heh.
Andy’s former best Sheriff’s Department source wouldn’t tell him anything at all.
Next he called David. Asked him what he knew about Howard Langton and the Boom Boom Bungalow on the night Janelle was killed.
David told him what he’d said before. That he and Barbara and the Langtons had been invited to dinner by Janelle. Then the dinner had been postponed by Janelle for nonspecific reasons. David believed that the Langtons had stayed home that night, but wasn’t sure because he’d been with Barbara and the children.
“A witness has put him at the Boom Boom Bungalow later that night,” said Andy. “I saw Langton at the jail about forty minutes ago and guess what?”
“I’d rather not.”
“He admitted it.”
A silence.
“Did he say anything about it to you?” asked Andy.
“I just told you no. It was my belief he spent the evening at home with Linda.”
Teresa appeared in the entrance to his cubicle. He saw the tender fear in her eyes. Swung around in his chair, gave her his back.
“I have to lead with Langton’s admission,” he said to his brother.
“Lead with what you have to, Andy. Did you take pictures of him, too?”
“Yep.”
“Heaven help Coach Howard,” David said softly. “He’s supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.”
“He is, David. And he also just admitted being at the scene of an unsolved murder. Maybe he could think about doing his civic duty and stepping forward with what he knows.”
“I guess he’ll have to do just that.”
“Is Howard a homo?”
“Why would he be?”
“The Boom Boom Bungalow is a homo bar and motel.”
“I didn’t know that. I do know Howard’s got a wonderful family.”
Andy hung up and swung back to Teresa.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“I’ve got a story to write. Give me half an hour.”
“This can’t wait.”
“Sure it can. Check-in time at the Seven Seas isn’t until what, two o’clock?”