Devil's Waltz Part 47

I worked with it a while longer.

Money and death, dollars and science.

I couldn't get it to mesh.

The parking meter's red VIOLATION flag popped up like toast. I looked at my watch. Just after noon. Over two hours until my appointment with Ca.s.sie and mommy.

In the meantime, why not a visit with daddy?

I used a pay phone in the administration building to call West Valley Community College and get directions.

Forty-five-minute drive, if traffic was thin. Leaving the campus and heading north, I turned west on Sunset and got onto the 405. At the interchange I transferred to the Ventura Freeway, drove toward the western end of the Valley, and got off at Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

The northward cruise took me through a commercial cross-section: upscale shopping plazas still pretending trickle-down economics was working, shabby storefront businesses that had never believed it in the first place, insta-bilt strip malls without any ideological underpinnings.

Up above Nordhoff, the street turned residential and I was treated to a lean stretch of budget-box apartments and motor courts, condo complexes plastered with happy-talk banners. A few citrus groves and U-pick farms had resisted progress. Essences of manure, petroleum, and lemon leaves mingled, not quite masking the burnt-supper smell of simmering dust.

I drove to the Santa Susanna Pa.s.s, but the road was closed for no apparent reason and blockaded by Cal-Trans barriers. I kept going to the end of Topanga, where a jumble of freeway overpa.s.ses b.u.t.ted up against the mountains. Off to the right a group of sleek women cantered on beautiful horses. Some of the riders wore fox-hunting garb; all looked content.

I found the 118 on-ramp within the concrete pretzel, traveled west for a few miles, and got off on a brand-new exit marked COLLEGE ROAD. West Valley C.C. was a half-mile up-the only thing in sight.

Nothing at all like the campus I'd just left. This one was announced by a huge, near-empty parking lot. Beyond that, a series of one-story prefab bungalows and trailers were distributed gracelessly over a ten-acre patch-work of concrete and dirt. The landscaping was tentative, unsuccessful in places. A sprinkling of students walked on plain-wrap concrete pathways.

I got out and made my way to the nearest trailer. The midday sun cast a tinfoil glare over the Valley and I had to squint. Most of the students were walking alone. Very little conversation filtered through the heat.

After a series of false starts, I managed to locate someone who could tell me where Sociology was. Bungalows 3A through 3F.

The departmental office was in 3A. The departmental secretary was blond and thin and looked just out of high school. She seemed put-upon when I asked her where Professor Jones's office was, but said, "Two buildings up, in Three-C."

Dirt separated the bungalows, cracked and trenched. So hard and dry that not a single footprint showed. A far cry from the Ivy League. Chip Jones's office was one of six in the small pink stucco building. His door was locked and the card listing his office hours was marked: ALWAYS.

FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED.

All the other offices were locked too. I went back to the secretary and asked her if Professor Jones was on campus. She consulted a schedule and said, "Oh, yeah. He's teaching Soc One-oh-two over in Five-J."

"When's the cla.s.s over?"

"In an hour-it's a two-hour seminar, twelve to two."

"Do they take a break in the middle?"

"I don't know."

She turned her back on me. I said, "Excuse me," managed to get her to tell me where 5J was, and walked there.

The building was a trailer, one of three on the western edge of the campus, overlooking a shallow ravine.

Despite the heat, Chip Jones was conducting cla.s.s outside, sitting on one of the few patches of gra.s.s in sight, in the partial shade of a young oak, facing ten or so students, all but two of them women. The men sat at the back; the women circled close to his knees.

I stopped a hundred feet away.

His face was half-turned away from me and his arms were moving. He had on a white polo s.h.i.+rt and jeans. Despite his position, he was able to inject a lot of body English into his delivery. As he moved from side to side the students' heads followed and a lot of long female hair swayed.

I realized I had nothing to say to him-had no reason to be there-and turned to leave.

Then I heard a shout, looked over my shoulder and saw him waving.

He said something to the cla.s.s, sprang to his feet, and loped toward me. I waited for him and when he got to me, he looked scared.

"I thought it was you. Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," I said. "Didn't want to alarm you. Just thought I'd drop by before heading over to your house."

"Oh-sure." He blew out breath. "Well, that's a relief. I just wish you'd told me you were coming, so I could've scheduled some time for us to talk. As it stands, I've got a two-hour seminar until two-you're welcome to sit in, but I don't imagine you want to hear about the structure of organizations. And after that there's a faculty meeting till three and another cla.s.s."

"Sounds like a busy day."

He smiled. "My kind of day." The smile vanished. "Actually, Cindy's the one with the tough job. I can escape."

He smoothed his beard. Today's earring was a tiny sapphire, inflamed by the sun. His bare arms were tan and hairless and sinewy.

"Is there anything specific you wanted to talk to me about?" he said. "I can have them break for a few minutes."

"No, not really." I looked around at all the empty s.p.a.ce.

"Not exactly Yale," he said, as if reading me. "I keep telling them a few trees would help. But I like being on the cutting edge-building something from scratch. This whole area's the high-growth region of the L.A. basin. Come back in a few years and it'll be teeming."

"Despite the slump?"

He frowned, tugged on his beard, and said, "Yes, I think so. The population can only go one way." Smile. "Or at least that's what my demographer friends tell me."

He turned toward the students, who were staring at us, and held up a hand. "Do you know how to get to the house from here?"

"Approximately."

"Let me tell you exactly. Just get back on the freeway-on the One-eighteen-and get off at the seventh exit. After that you can't miss it."

"Great. I won't keep you," I said.

He looked at me but seemed to be somewhere else.

"Thanks," he said. Another backward glance. "This is what keeps me sane-gives me the illusion of freedom. I'm sure you know what I mean."

"Absolutely."

"Well," he said, "I'd better be getting back. Love to my ladies."

27.

The ride to the house wouldn't take more than fifteen minutes, leaving forty-five to go before my two-thirty with Ca.s.sie.

Remembering Cindy's odd resistance to my coming out any earlier, I decided to head over there right now. Do things on my terms, for a change.

Each exit on the 118 took me farther into the isolation of brown mountains, deforested by five years of drought. The seventh was marked Westview, and it deposited me on a gently curving road of red clay darkened by the mountain's hulk. A few minutes later the clay turned to twin lanes of new asphalt, and red pennants on high metal poles began appearing at fifty-foot intervals. A yellow backhoe was parked on a turnoff. No other vehicles were in sight. Baked hillside and blue sky filled my eyes. The pennant poles flashed by like jail bars.

The asphalt tabled at a hundred square feet of brick, shaded by olive trees. High metal gates were rolled wide open. A big wooden sign to the left of the aperture read WESTVIEW ESTATES in red block letters. Below the legend was an artist's rendition of a spreading pastel-hued housing development set into too-green alps.

I rolled close enough to the sign to read it. A timetable beneath the painting listed six construction phases, each with "twenty to a hundred custom estate homesites, 1/2 to 5 acres." According to the dates, three phases should have been completed. When I looked through the gates I saw a sprinkle of rooftops, lots of brown. Chip's comments about population growth, a few minutes ago, seemed a bit of wishful thinking.

I drove past an untended guardhouse whose windows still bore masking-tape Xs, into a completely empty parking lot fringed with yellow gazania. The exit from the lot fed to a wide, empty street named Sequoia Lane. The sidewalks were so new they looked whitewashed.

The left side of the street was an ivy-covered embankment. A half-block in, to the right, sat the first houses, a quartet of big, bright, creatively windowed structures, but unmistakably a tract.

Mock Tudor, mock hacienda, mock Regency, mock Ponderosa Ranch, all fronted by sod lawns crosscut with beds of succulents and more gazania. Tennis court tarp backed the Tudor house; peac.o.c.k-blue pool water glimmered behind the open lots of the others. Signs on the doors of all four read MODEL. Business hours were posted on a small billboard on the lawn of the Regency, along with the phone number of a real estate company in Agoura. More red pennants. All four doors were closed and the windows were dark.

I kept going, looking for Dunbar Court. The side streets were all "Courts"-wide, squat strips ending in cul-de-sacs, and ribbing eastward from Sequoia. Very few cars were parked along curbs and in driveways. I saw a bicycle on its side in the center of a half-dead lawn, a garden hose that lay unfurled like a somnolent snake-but no people. A momentary breeze produced sound but no relief from the heat.

Dunbar was the sixth Court. The Jones house was at the mouth of the dead end, a wide, one-story ranch, white stucco trimmed with used-brick. In the center of the front yard a wagon wheel leaned against a young birch tree too thin to support it. Flower beds edged the facade. The windows sparkled. The loom of mountains behind the house made it look like something constructed from a child's kit. The air smelled of gra.s.s pollen.

A gray-blue Plymouth Voyager van was parked in the driveway. A brown pickup truck with a bed full of hoses, nets, and plastic bottles was idling in the driveway of the house next door. The sign on the door said VALLEYBRITE POOL SERVICE. Just as I pulled up to the curb the truck shot out. The driver saw me and stopped short. I waved him on. A young, s.h.i.+rtless, ponytailed man stuck his head out and stared. Then he grinned suddenly and gave me the thumb-up, instant buddy sign. Dropping a bronze arm over the driver's door, he finished backing up and was off.

I walked to the front door. Cindy opened it before I had a chance to knock, brus.h.i.+ng hair out of her face and glancing at her Swatch.

"Hi," she said. Her voice sounded choked, as if she'd just caught her breath.

"Hi." I smiled. "Traffic was better than I thought."

"Oh . . . sure. C'mon in." The hair was unbraided but still waved by constriction. She wore a black T-s.h.i.+rt and very short white shorts. Her legs were smooth and pale, a little skinny but well-shaped above narrow bare feet. The sleeves of the T-s.h.i.+rt were cut high and on the bias, revealing lots of slender arm and a bit of shoulder. The bottom hem of her s.h.i.+rt barely reached her waist. As she held the door open she hugged herself and looked uncomfortable. Showing more skin than she'd intended for me, I supposed.

I walked in and she closed the door after me, taking care not to slam it. A modest entry hall ended at ten feet of wall papered in a teal-blue miniprint and hung with at least a dozen framed photographs. Cindy and Chip and Ca.s.sie, posed and candid, and a couple of a pretty, dark-haired baby in blue.

Smiling baby boy. I looked away from him and let my eyes settle on an enlarged snapshot of Cindy and an older woman. Cindy appeared around eighteen. She wore a white bare-midriff blouse and tight jeans tucked into white boots, and her hair was a wide, windblown fan. The older woman was leathery-looking, thin but wide-hipped, and had on a red-and-white striped sleeveless knit top over white stretch pants and white shoes. Her hair was dark-gray and cut very short, her lips so skinny they were nearly invisible. Both she and Cindy wore sungla.s.ses; both were smiling. The older woman's smile said No Nonsense. Boat masts and gray-green water backgrounded the shot.

"That's my Aunt Harriet," said Cindy.

Remembering she'd grown up in Ventura, I said, "Where is this, Oxnard Harbor?"

"Uh-huh. Channel Islands. We used to go there for lunch, on her days off. . . ." Another look at her watch. "Ca.s.sie's still sleeping. She takes her nap around now."

"Back to routine pretty quickly." I smiled. "That's good."

"She's a good girl. . . . I guess she'll be up soon."

She sounded edgy again.

"Can I get you something to drink?" she said, moving away from the picture wall. "There's iced tea in the fridge."

"Sure, thanks."

I followed her through a generously dimensioned living room lined on three sides with floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves and furnished with oxblood leather couches and club chairs that looked new. The shelves were full of hardcovers. A brown afghan was draped over one of the chairs. The fourth wall had two curtained windows and was papered in a black-and-green plaid that darkened the room further and gave it a clubby look, unmistakably masculine.

Chip's dominance? Or indifference to interior decorating on her part? I trailed slightly behind her, watching her bare feet sink into brown plush carpet. A gra.s.s stain spotted one b.u.t.tock of her shorts. She had a stiff stride and held her arms pressed to her sides.

A dining room papered in a brown mini-print led to a white-tile and oak kitchen large enough to accommodate a distressed pine table and four chairs. The appliances were chrome-fronted and spotless. Gla.s.sed cabinets revealed neatly stacked crockery and size-ordered gla.s.s-ware. The dish drainer was empty; the counters, bare.

The window above the sink was a greenhouse affair filled with painted clay pots stuffed with summer flowers and herbs. A larger window to the left afforded a view of the backyard. Flagstone patio, rectangular pool covered with blue plastic and fenced with wrought iron. Then a long, perfect strip of gra.s.s, interrupted only by a wooden play-set, that ended at a hedge of orange trees espaliered against a six-foot cinder-block wall. Beyond the wall the ubiquitous mountains hung like drapery. Maybe miles away, maybe yards. I tried to get some perspective, couldn't. The gra.s.s began looking like a runway to eternity.

She said, "Please, have a seat."

Setting a place mat before me, she put a tall gla.s.s of iced tea upon it. "Just a mix-hope that's all right." Before I could answer, she returned to the refrigerator and touched the door.

I drank and said, "It's fine."

She picked up a washcloth and ran it over clean counter tiles, avoiding my eyes.

I sipped a bit, waited till we finally made contact, and tried another smile.

Her return smile was quick and tight and I thought I saw some color in her cheeks. She tugged her s.h.i.+rt down, kept her legs pressed together as she wiped the counter some more, washed the cloth, rung it out, folded it. Held it in both hands as if unsure what to do with it.

"So," she said.

I looked out at the mountains. "Beautiful day."

She nodded, snapped her face to the side, cast a downward glance, and placed the washcloth over the faucet spout. She ripped a square of paper towel from a wooden roller and began wiping the spigot. Her hands were wet. A Lady Macbeth thing or just her way of dealing with the tension?

I watched her clean some more. Then she gave another downward look and I followed it. To her chest. Nipples poking sharply through the thin black cotton of her s.h.i.+rt, small but erect.

When she looked up, my eyes were elsewhere.

"She should be up soon," she said. "She usually sleeps from about one to two."

"Sorry for coming so early."

"Oh, no, that's okay. I wasn't doing anything anyway."