loose?”
“I want to know what you were doing beating on some street people.”
“It was a simple religious disagreement,” I said.
“Religious?”
“I object to any religion being represented by a rooster.”
Zebker shook his head.
“The Reverend Son Young Moon,” I said. “It’s what he calls himself. He’s got this giant comb on the top of his head. He should be called Son of Foghorn Leghorn.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s a guru wannabe, up on the boulevard. He was in a love triangle with Carl Richess.”
Zebker paused. Nodded. “Thanks,” he said.
“Always happy to help out the police,” I said. “Unless I’m cross-examining.”
“I’ll remember that,” he said. “Need a ride to your car?”
“You’ll naturally fix the parking ticket that’s attached to it by now.”
He just smiled.
37
IN HIS CROWN Vic, on the way up to Hollywood Boulevard, Zebker said, “You a Dodger fan?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Me too. Lifelong. Went to my first game in 1965, with my dad. I remember walking into the stadium, seeing the green field. Don Drysdale was pitching. He looked about ten feet tall.”
“I started following them in ’88, the year of the—”
“Kirk Gibson home run,” Zebker said. “Yeah, that warmed my heart. After that the Dodger fortunes went down, but you know how many times I went to see O’Malley, or Lasorda, to get in their faces?”
I shook my head.
“Goose egg. Didn’t interfere. Because it’s not my place to interfere with the Dodger professionals, am I right?”
I saw where this was going. “Detective, I have a job to do. I’m not trying to get in your way, but I have to make my own way at the same time.”
“Tell you what,” Zebker said. “Fill me in on how you found this guy, this Moon guy, and why you were talking to him.”
“I talked to somebody at Carl’s apartment,” I said. “A guy named Morgan Barstler. He used to be with Carl.”
“Carl was gay?”
“Yep.”
“What’d this guy Barstler say?”
“I asked him if he knew any reason Carl would want to kill himself, and he couldn’t think of any. Carl did have a drinking problem and didn’t have a partner, so who knows?”
“And your connection with Carl Richess was a DUI?”
“Yes.”
“What was the dispo on that?”
“Dismissed. On a one-eight BAC, I might add.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Brilliance,” I said.
“Wish I hadn’t asked,” Zebker said.
He did drop me at my car. It did have a parking ticket. And he did say, “Them’s the breaks,” before he left me there.
I drove to Highland, took a right. Up near the Hollywood Bowl, just before the freeway, somebody had spray-painted the wall with Jesus Saves From Hell. But another enterprising prophet had added to the words in the same black paint, but with slightly different lettering.
It now read Jesus Saves From Hello Dolly!
Not a bad thing to be saved from, I thought.
38
BACK AT ST. Monica’s I was almost to my trailer when I saw Sister Mary.
She was coming out of the chapel with two other nuns. She stopped when she saw me, then came over.
“You’re back,” I said.
“Good call,” she said. Her face reflected a kind of repose I hadn’t seen in her recently. “It was a good trip. Good people. And I visited a holy place. Do you know about Thomas Merton?”
“Heard of him,” I said. “A monk, wasn’t he?”
“A Trappist,” she said. “The holy ground is the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, where Merton had a famous revelation. There’s a plaque there on the spot.”
“What revelation was that?”
“He was standing there, in the center of the shopping district, and he said he was overwhelmed with the realization that he loved all the people around him. That he belonged to them, and they to him. And they could never be alien to each other, even though they were total strangers. He said it was like waking up from a dream of separateness.”
It seemed to me there were tears forming in her eyes.
“Have you ever felt that way?” she said.
“Not since I started going to court,” I said.
Her blue eyes flashed, like colored glass glinting in the sun. “His joy came from being a member of a race in which God himself became incarnate. As I was standing there, I looked around and got that feeling, too.”
She was obviously moved, and maybe a little embarrassed, because I wasn’t catching the feeling. I think she wanted me to. An uncomfortable moment passed between us.
“So when we play ball,” I said, “Can I expect a softer, gentler Sister Mary?”
She smiled and I knew my comment had relieved the tension. “Not