TWO HOURS later Andy had written both pieces. He had never written lies before and the words sat oddly on the paper. It left him tired, like the ribbon ink was blood that had come out of his body.

He put the originals and two sets of carbons in his briefcase, locked it, and headed out for Millie’s.

Nick read them in the poor light of a red vinyl booth. He finished, rubbed his chin. “It’s these or Katy?”

Andy nodded.

“Oh man,” whispered Nick.

ANDY PLACED the original articles in Jonas Dessinger’s in-basket just after six that evening. Carbon number one went to his editor, Teresa. Carbon number two went into his top desk drawer.

Jonas called at 6:10 to say he loved the pieces. He wanted to substitute the words “bogged-down” and “overmatched” for “lengthy” and “less experienced.”

Andy told him to take it up with Teresa.

Teresa called at 6:15 to say she couldn’t believe her overbred cousin was putting him through this. She demanded to know what the cause of all this animosity was, but Andy wouldn’t say. She thought “overmatched” was speculative and untrue.

“Listen to what you wrote,” she said. “‘After two agonizing weeks, we at the Journal have begun to wonder if the evidence that has stumped the rookie detective might be better evaluated by a more seasoned investigator.’”

“Orders from your overbred cousin.”

“I can bad-mouth my family. You can’t.”

“I have to bad-mouth my own.”

“Andy, what’s going on?”

“Talk to the associate publisher. He’s the psychopath fashion model on the third floor.”

“I’m going to.”

Andy called Verna and got a home number for Sharon Santos. It cost him drinks and maybe dinner. Sharon confirmed that she’d talked to a man identifying himself as Jonas Dessinger of the Orange County Journal. She had signed a “kill statement” about her liaison with Nick Becker in order to prevent a story about it in the paper. She allowed that her neighbors had probably seen Nick more than once, and “could possibly have heard some things.” Nick had helped this one neighbor jump her car, so she’d remember him, no problem. Sure, Nick knew all this. But Sharon was on his side all the way. She loved him and didn’t want to ruin his marriage.

“Andy,” said Sharon, “I’d kill myself before I’d hurt Nick.”

A chill shivered up Andy’s back. “Avoid both,” he said.

“All right.”

He left the building through the display advertising department back door. Couldn’t face Teresa, whom he loved, or Jonas, whom he hated. Or the owlish copy editors or surly night-beat photogs.

Andy gunned his ice blue Corvair down Newport toward Coast Highway. Police band radio loud as always, top down, and the air cold on his face. Lynette’s address in his reporter’s notepad on the seat beside him.

He couldn’t believe Jonas could make him screw over Nick like this. Make him screw himself over. Like a bad dream. All he ever wanted to do was write a decent book someday and stick by the people he loved. Not accomplishing either of those, he thought. Writing lies to hurt Nick was all he was doing. Either do that, or destroy Nick and Katy. He had the idea of getting Jonas off somewhere quiet to talk to him, maybe Jonas would get rational. Like maybe the end of the Newport Pier, and when they were done talking Andy could push him off.

21

LYNETTE VONN LIVED up in Huntington Beach. She let Andy in without a smile. Straight black hair, early twenties, thin. Bell-bottoms made her look thinner. Barefoot. Yellow halter top with a work shirt over it. Big eyes. Andy saw in her none of her sister Janelle’s casual radiance.

Lynette made them coffee and they sat in the den. Green shag carpet, a TV with rabbit ears, and a Magnavox hi-fi on a rolling stand with clear wheels. Andy smelled marijuana and incense. The house was a small craftsman cottage with a chain-link fence around the backyard and an oil pumper beyond the fence. Through the den window the pumper looked like a monstrous steel grasshopper gnawing away. The night was cool and the windows were open. Andy smelled ocean and crude oil. The neighbors had the radio on, “Sunshine of Your Love” riding in with the smells.

Lynette told him she had left the Tustin home when she was fourteen. Run off with one of her brother Lenny’s friends, Preach. Preach was twenty-five, drove a chopped black Harley with the words God’s Outlaw painted on the tank in white. He could cook crank you wouldn’t believe, clear as glass, keep you high for days and a tolerable crash. Taught other Hessians how to do it. Preach also had a religious streak, carried around a bag of rattlesnakes tied to the top of the sissy bar of his hog, and that bag would swing up against her back if they slowed down fast, a creepy feeling but she never got bit. Preach had devised this kind of religious service for Sunday mornings where you’d listen to him sermonize and take the snakes out of the bag and wave ’em around, but Preach had sewn their mouths shut with a big needle and dental floss and when they started starving he’d toss them out and get new ones. Which was easy when you’re riding your Harley all around the desert giving lessons on crank production. But Preach had the other Hessians freaked out with those snakes and his own weird eyes-dark brown with blue around the edges. It was all rough sex, drugs, and fights until she ran out on him in Colusa, picked up a bus down to San Francisco, and moved in with a musician/heroin dealer. That lasted a year, coldest of her life, couldn’t ever thaw out in that town.

“Wow,” said Andy.

Lynette shook her head and sighed. “Pure crazy. I hitchhiked down here last year. Liked it and stayed. Had some money saved. I’m waitressing over at the Bear. I can’t get you in free but I can get you good seats once you pay your way in.”

Andy had been to the Golden Bear a lot. Seen the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul & Mary, and Pete Seeger and Dylan and all the folkies, but now they were doing almost all rock and roll, thank God.

“Did you and Janelle stay in touch?”

“It turned out that she wrote me a lot of letters but didn’t know where to mail them. I pretty much dropped out. When I got this place and got clean I called her and she came over. Brought the letters in a box. It was kinda funny seeing her for the first time in six years. My sister was two years younger than me and we weren’t very much alike.”

Andy looked at Lynette. My sister, he thought. “Maybe you were more alike than you think.”

Lynette stared at Andy with her big brown eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, you both had a talent for what most people would consider trouble.”

“No question it was trouble.”

“The same kind of hunger for something,” said Andy. “But for what? To get to something better?”

“Just to get away, I think. Did you know her well?”

“No, not really. I admired her, though. Something about her.”

“She was pretty,” said Lynette.

“But more than pretty. Remember the guitar and tutu?”

“That tutu was mine.”

Andy looked out the window to the big oil pumper. It chomped away at the ground, drawing up the crude. He thought of Lynette throwing the rocks at them after the rumble by the packinghouse. And Janelle with the oranges she didn’t throw. And Janelle on the porch of the Holt Avenue house, shaking her curls and rasping out that song. And Janelle coming out of the White House nightclub in Laguna that night. With Jesse Black and the surf movie guy and Cory Bonnett the leather store owner. The way the streetlight cast her face in the fog. I’m so sorry what happened to Clay. Call me sometime.

For the millionth time in his life, Andy’s inner boot kicked his heart, hard, for never calling Janelle Vonn.