Los Angeles, a section of the city not too far from downtown.
His house was on a tree-lined street that would have been fashionable about a hundred and five years ago. Now the sidewalks were cracked and chain-link fences guarded spare lawns.
Molina’s place was one without a fence. The house was a faded blue clapboard. A Ford pickup was in the driveway. I walked to the screen door and knocked.
Movement inside the house, then someone peeped out the small square window in the door.
I thought I saw one eye narrow in the glass.
“Nick?” I said.
The door whipped open, keeping a mesh of screen between us. “What are you doing here? How’d you…?”
“Can we talk?”
“You can’t just come here!”
“Nick…”
“You don’t got a right to call me Nick. What’d you do, follow me around? What gives you—”
“I just want to talk. Ten minutes.” I looked over his shoulder and saw a clock on a wall next to a crucifix. Onion smell drifted out and TV light flashed.
“I told you, I got nothing,” Molina said.
“You mean you won’t tell me, right?”
“So what? I don’t got to talk to you. They…” He shut his lips like a trap.
“They what?” I said. “Who’s they?”
“Listen, this is it. I’m sorry what happened to Carl.”
“So you don’t think he killed himself.”
“I didn’t say nothin’ about nothin’. Now don’t you come here no more.”
He slammed the door.
I waited a couple of seconds, then knocked again. “Nick, you’ve got a duty here. Anything you say to me is confidential, okay? I just want to know what happened. Nick? I know you know more. You can tell me—”
The door swung open. What peeped out this time was a revolver in the hand of Nick Molina.
“You’re trespassing,” he said.
“So are you,” I said.
He looked confused, then mad.
I said, “You’re trespassing on the sacred ground of Jesus. You have him on your wall. You have Jesus on your wall and right here in front of him you’re refusing to help one of the least of these, a man in jail who should not be there. How can you do that?”
“Shut up and get off my property. I’ll shoot you.”
“What would Jesus say about that?”
He slammed the door again. Maybe he’d talk it over with his Savior. And I hoped he’d get an answer, because I needed a witness.
75
WHICH IS WHY, the next day, I drove out to La Cañada Flintridge with Sister Mary. It’s a quiet little burg between the San Gabriel Mountain Range and the Angeles National Forest, about a Frisbee toss from Pasadena.
The shooting range was in the foothills, up a mountain road. We drove up a winding drive and parked in front of the office. As we did, the radio was just starting “I Will” by the Beatles. Sister Mary surprised me by saying she wanted to hear it, it was her favorite song, and would I leave the keys?
I got the distinct impression she wanted to listen to the song alone. Odd choice, I thought, for a nun. A song about romantic love. About loving someone forever, in fact. But I didn’t analyze the moment. I also didn’t want to listen, because the only woman that song applied to, for me, was dead. The only woman I had ever been prepared to say I will to. The song would be a hot stake in my gut. I didn’t know if I even had another I will in me.
Or ever even wanted one, for all it gave you. I left the radio on for her and went into the office alone.
Inside the wood-paneled mobile was a little store full of shooting accessories. Holsters, gun cases, ammo. And a desk for check-in. Behind the desk was a man with an ample paunch and a scarlet USC Trojans T-shirt.
“Help you?” he said.
“Name’s Buchanan. I’m a lawyer and—”
“That’s all right, sir, we take all kinds here. No discrimination, that’s my motto.”
“Good motto,” I said. “I’m not here to do any shooting. I’m here to ask a couple of questions.”
USC Boy frowned. “If these are questions that have legal ramifications, then you should talk to our attorney.”
“I just want to talk to somebody who was working here when my client came up and did some shooting with his brother. He could only remember that it was a woman, and she has tattoos on her right arm.”
He paused, then shook his head. “Nobody here like that.”
“You wouldn’t just be playing around now, would you? I look like I went to UCLA or something?”